Community Size and Sex Role Attitudes of the Students in India

Abstract

The major purpose of the study is to examine the relation between background variables and the attitudes toward wife, mother and father roles for three subsamples based on community size and also to find out the strongest predictor variables in explaining the variance in the attitudes toward the three social roles. Data were collected from a sample of 411 students from three colleges in India in 1978. Twenty-four (24) independent variables are correlated with three dependent variables-wife role, mother role, and father role-for rural, town, and metropolitan students. None of the independent variables is significantly related to all three dependent variables for the three subsamples. Based on the mean value, the students in general embraced the traditional attitudes toward the wife, mother and father roles. The regression model for mother role attitudes explained the greatest variance for the three subsamples compared to the model for wife role attitudes and father role attitudes. It is surprising to find that not a single common predictor is found in the regression models for the three criterion variables for rural, town and metropolitan residents. The study suggests that the community size may have conditioned the effect of background variables differently on the wife, mother, and father role attitudes of Indian students.