Toward a Measure of Patriotic and Nationalistic Attitudes

TLDR

The study examined how patriotic and nationalistic attitudes are multidimensional and relate to nuclear policy opinions. The authors surveyed 194 college students, 24 high school students, and 21 building contractors with a 120‑item Patriotism/Nationalism Questionnaire, administered an 18‑item Nuclear Policy Questionnaire to 166 college students, and applied iterated principal factor analysis with Varimax rotation to derive six factors, then examined predictive validity and demographic effects. The six extracted factors were distinct and predictive of nuclear policy attitudes, supporting that patriotic/nationalistic attitudes are multidimensional and differentially related to nuclear policy opinions, underscoring the need to distinguish patriotism from nationalism.

Abstract

The multidimensionality of patriotic and nationalistic attitudes and their relationship to nuclear policy opinions were investigated. One hundred and ninety-four college students, 24 high school students, and 21 building contractors were administered the 120-item Patriotism/Nationalism Questionnaire. One hundred and sixty-six of the college students were concurrently administered the 18-item Nuclear Policy Questionnaire. An iterated principal factor analysis was performed on the Patriotism/Nationalism Questionnaire and six factors were extracted for Varimax rotation. The results indicated that the factors were interpretable and distinct. Further analyses indicated the predictive validity of the subscales derived from the six factors for the Nuclear Policy Questionnaire, and exploratory analyses of variance examined the effects of selected demographic variables. The findings support the contention that patriotic/nationalistic attitudes entail multiple dimensions, and that they are differentially related to nuclear policy opinions. We conclude that researchers need to be more attentive to this multidimensionality, especially the distinction between patriotism and nationalism.