Citizenship Perceptions of University Students

Abstract

Citizenship has become one of the important topics discussed in especially developed countries by policy makers and various stakeholders in recent years. Some important reasons behind it are the political, economic and social uneasiness throughout the world in both collectivistic and individualistic societies. The current study aims at looking at the citizenship perception among university students in one of those collectivistic countries. The participants answered the question ‘what does citizenship mean for you?’ and the data was analyzed by giving descriptive statistics using the quantitative data analysis software, SPSS. The value items given as choices to the students were; equality, freedom, social order, national security, a world at peace, respect for tradition, respect for privacy, social justice, independent, protecting the environment, loyalty, obedient, helpful, and responsible. The participants were categorized in two different faculties which were faculty of humanities and social sciences and faculty of management and administrative sciences. The results show that the students from faculty of humanities and social sciences have tendency towards values represented in individualistic societies while defining citizenship. On the other hand, students of faculty of management and administrative sciences showed greater tendency towards the values represented in collectivistic countries. Another finding of the study was that females highly prioritized all value items compared to male participants. Turkey is considered to be a collectivistic country however the results show that majority of the participants prioritize values represented in individualistic nations. Further studies need to be conducted in order to find out whether there has been a shift from being a collectivistic society or not.