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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2009
The purpose of the research on which this paper is based was to investigate by social survey methods some of the political attitudes of schoolboys (aged between 8 and 16 years of age) who were living through violent years in the history of Northern Ireland. Political attitudes were studied against the social characteristics and backgrounds of a large sample of schoolboys during the fifteen months prior to the announcement of direct rule from Westminster in 1972. This paper focuses upon affect towards the Stormont Government during the last two years of its existence.
1 When the first survey was undertaken in the secondary schools, I had no assurance that my research would be funded by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission beyond an initial year. Because of the relative lack of mixed (both-sexes) schools in Northern Ireland, I decided that the ten weeks at my disposal (mid-January to Easter 1971) were insufficient to visit all the boys' and girls' schools necessary for a Northern Ireland sample. Furthermore, dividing the sample between boys and girls, at every stage of analysis, would have led to having too few cases to make any sense in some of the cross-tabulation categories. Having made the initial decision to survey among boys only, it became necessary, in order to compare secondary and primary samples, to interview boys even after the project had been extended.
2 When the secondary school sample was collected in 1971, approximately equal numbers of boys in grammar and secondary intermediate (secondary modern) schools were included. There are, however, many more boys in secondary intermediate than in grammar schools in Northern Ireland. Thus, in order to make the secondary sample more representative of Ulster schoolboys, weighting after selection was necessary. Allowing for a sprinkling of ‘others’ (i.e. other religion) in the grammar schools the following is a fair approximation of the actual schoolboy population attending schools defined by religion in 1971: (see Tables overleaf)
3 The six occupations employed were: policeman, baker, soldier, butcher, judge and grocer. Greatest hesitancy occurred over the public versus private nature of the judge's role.
4 Hess, Robert D. and Torney, Judith, The Development of Political Attitudes in Children (Chicago: Aldine, 1967).Google Scholar
5 Rose, Richard, Governing Without Consensus: An Irish Perspective (London: Faber, 1971), p. 189.Google Scholar
6 The Difference Index ranges from o when the proportions are identical in the groups compared to too when no one in one group shares an opinion or attitude with someone in another group. The lower the index the greater the similarity between the groups being compared, and the higher the index, the greater the difference.
7 Sonquist, J. A. and Morgan, J. N., The Detection of Interaction Effects, Monograph No. 35, Survey Research Centre, The Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, 1964.Google Scholar By the time a reader has worked through a number of potential influences, considered separately, he will begin to ask which is most important. So, in order to sort out the relative importance of various influences, it is helpful to use a statistical method capable of drawing together a number of influences. The technique used here, Automatic Interaction Detection, is known familiarly as ‘tree analysis’ because it produces figures that resemble the branches of a ‘tree’. Essentially, AID is a ‘stepwise regression programme’ which operates by finding that dichotomy based on any predictor which accounts for more of the variance in the dependent variable than any other dichotomization based on grouping the categories of a single predictor into two groups. Having made this first dichotomy, the AID programme then takes the groups produced by the first division and splits them in a similar manner. The process of dichotomizing groups continues in this manner to the end of the ‘trees’.
8 Pilot testing in 1970 revealed that schoolchildren in Northern Ireland, when asked about nationality, generally called themselves ‘British’, ‘Ulster’, or ‘Irish’. When these surveys were carried out Protestants were either ‘British’ or ‘Ulster’; Catholics were predominantly ‘Irish’ with a minority of Catholic boys subscribing to an ‘Ulster’ national identification. In such cases ‘Ulster’ need not be confused with Northern Ireland since it generally refers to the old (before partition) nine-county Ulster as part of Ireland.
9 See Russell, James, ‘Northern Ireland: Socialisation into Conflict’, Social Studies: Irish Journal of Sociology, IV (1975), 109–23.Google Scholar
10 See, for instance, Bernstein, Basil, ‘Education and Society’, New Society, xv, No. 387, 26 02 1970, 344–7.Google Scholar