Examining students' affective commitment toward country: A case study of a Singapore primary school

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine students' affective commitment toward Singapore. Affective commitment refers to the sense of attachment to the nation state. The sample was taken from 286 students in a primary school. In the first section of the paper, we described the design of a Likert-type Affective Commitment to Country questionnaire. Factor analyses (principal component analysis and confirmatory factor analysis) showed evidence of construct validity for the 10-item scale, and an overall Cronbach alpha reliability coefficient of 0.91. In the second section, we reported the statistics related to the students' affective commitment scores. Overall, a positive affective commitment toward the country was found. Results of our t-test analyses revealed that no statistically significant difference was found between boys and girls for each of the questionnaire items. However, students who had higher academic achievement reported significantly higher scores than their lower ability counterparts with regard to six items of the questionnaire. Suggestions for future research are discussed. © 2011 National Institute of Education, Singapore.