WATERGATE AND POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION
The Inescapable Event
ROBERT PARKER HAWKINS
University of Wisconsin—Madison
SUZANNE PINGREE
DONALD F. ROBERTS
Stanford University
- he Watergate crisis clearly had
important effect on the
political scene, dramatically changing political
opinion and the balance of political power. Less obvious, but
perhaps more significant, is the possible long-term impact of the
entire Watergate scandal on America’s future voters.
A brief review of political socialization research reveals that
instead of being uninterested in and insulated from political
U.S.
an
~
events, children may be
one
of the
more
affected segments of
population. Evidence is mounting that children, even in the
early grade-school years, do attend to political information
(e.g., Chaffee et al., 1970; Hawkins, 1974; Tolley, 1973).
Moreover, several studies have shown that children at least as
young as eight years have already begun to form ideas about
politics, ideas that may serve as the foundation of adult political
attitudes and behaviors (Dennis, 1973; Greenstein, 1965; Hess
and Tomey, 1967).
But while children’s political ideas are probably important in
influencing what their attitudes and behavior will be like as
the
AMERICAN POLITICS QUARTERLY, Vol. 3 No. 4, October 1975
Sage Publication~, Inc.
@1975
[406]
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[407]
adults, their ideas are emphatically not adult-like. The young
child’s conceptions of politics and government are initially
global and affective, only gradually becoming differentiated and
taking on cognitive as well as affective content. For example,
youngsters initially identify government almost entirely with
the wise, benevolent, and nurturant figure of the president.
Only later do they add cognitive detail of levels of government,
different governmental structures, and the distinction between
abstract governmental roles and the fallible humans that fill
them (Hess and Torney, 1967). The dominance of the affective
dimension for the young child may also be responsible for the
early acquisition of fairly stable party identification, since it
makes good-bad evaluations possible without recourse to
complicated ideological positions.
Studies attempting to explain where children’s political
attitudes originate and how they are learned have usually
focused on parents (Hyman, 1959) or on schools (Hess and
Torney, 1967). However, lack of agreement between parent and
child except on party identification or concrete issues (Jennings
and Niemi, 1973), and the avoidance of any hint of political
conflict by most elementary school teachers (Franklin, 1972),
suggest that neither of these factors dominates political socialization.
From another
generally share
perspective, political socialization researchers
an implicit theory that political campaigns
provide recurring critical periods of acceleration in political
socialization, by focusing attention on the political process and
by providing greatly increased information about how the
system works. Given that the mass media are the means by
which attention gets focused and the channels through which
much campaign information flows, it seems reasonable to
attribute to them a major role in political socialization. Recent
research indicates positive relationships between children’s use
of &dquo;public affairs&dquo; content in the media and various measures of
political knowledge (e.g., Chaffee et al., 1970; Hawkins, 1974;
Roberts et al., 1975).
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[408]
mass media coverage of l~, and public
press’s role in the affair constitute a
particularly salient and important political socialization event.
Indeed, Watergate was an episode to which, for a variety of
reasons, children may have been especially sensitive. First, much
more information about politics and government was available
through the media than is normal-perhaps even more (and for a
longer period) than in a national election campaign. Second, the
tarnished picture of politics and government during Watergate
was very different from the clean, wholesome, and orderly
picture usually presented to young children. Third, the revelations of burglary, lying, and cheating probably encouraged
affective evaluations and the sort of simple good-bad judgments
that are easy for children to make and understand. Fourth,
much of the reaction to controversy was along party lines, a
dimension that young children can easily use as an affective
marker. Finally, and perhaps most important, the president,
ordinarily the dominant central figure in young children’s ideas
about politics, was constantly accused of unwise, unethical, and
even illegal actions. Thus, the Watergate affair provided a
unique &dquo;laboratory&dquo; in which to examine children’s political
knowledge and attitudes.
The two related studies reported here attempted to take
advantage of the naturally occurring &dquo;treatment’ that Watergate offered. They used differing samples, measures, and
The Watergate crisis
comment about the
methods, but their combined scope can be characterized by two
general questions. First, what did Watergate mean to children in
terms of their communication behaviors, knowledge of the
events, and attitudes about specific and general aspects of the
political system? We expected to find that children were
generally affected-that youngsters even as young as fourth
graders would attend to, learn from, and be influenced by the
Watergate revelations. For example, we expected decreases in
children’s feelings of political efficacy and evaluations of
President Nixon, and
honesty as an
increase in
important issue.
an
concern
with government
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[409]
Second, which children were most involved in and affected
by Watergate? We expected outcomes on our criterion variables
to differ depending on things such as age, party identification,
interest in politics, and family communication patterns. For
example, we expected younger children and those identifying
themselves as Republicans to know less about Watergate, but to
be more disillusioned about the political process. Similarly, we
expected interest in politics, and past and current political
communication behavior, to be related to knowledge about
Watergate, but not necessarily to political attitudes.
More explicit hypotheses and the nature of our measures will
become apparent as we present the results of our studies.
However, while the other variables are probably self-evident, the
dimensions of family communication may bear some introduction. Research on family communication structure (see McLeod
and Chaffee, 1972) suggests that parental guidance falls onto
two dimensions. Families stressing &dquo;socio-orientation&dquo; encourage the child to avoid controversy and to defer to superiors in a
hierarchy. Those stressing &dquo;concept-orientation&dquo; emphasize
expression of ideas and exposure to controversy. The two
dimensions have been shown to be basically uncorrelated and to
be useful locators of indices as varied as mass media use, school
activities, and public affairs issues. We expected children from
families where concept-orientation was emphasized to pay more
attention to Watergate, but we did not expect it to locate
differential responses to affective dimensions of the event. A
high familial emphasis on socio-orientation, on the other hand,
would seem theoretically unrelated to an interest in the
knowledge contained in Watergate news (although it might
increase the importance of party preferences), but it could
become important in locating attitudinal responses to affective
issues in the Watergate events.
METHOD
Both studies drew subsamples from a large panel (n 1,173)
of San Francisco Bay area fourth, sixth, eighth, tenth, and
=
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[410]
twelfth graders participating in a study of political socialization
during the 1972 election campaign. About two-thirds of the
children in the total sample, and all of the children in the two
studies reported here, attended parochial schools. Various
analyses performed on the total sample indicated no noteworthy differences between responses of the public and
parochial school children.
In late October, at the height of the 1972 campaign and
before Watergate was a serious issue, the total sample responded
to questionnaires containing items on mass media use and
interpersonal communication behavior, family communication
patterns, and a variety of campaign issues and political
attitudes. Data from these questionnaires provided the baseline
results for the two subsamples.
MAY STUDY
subsample responded to self-administered classroom
questionnaires in May 1973, at the end of a month of
revelations of dirty tricks, illegal campaign contributions,
charges of White House involvement in coverups, and immediately after the first week of the televised Ervin committee
hearings during which James McCord testified that he was
offered executive clemency in return for his silence. As
Watergate thus began to dominate the media, 91 fourth and 911
eighth graders at one school were selected from the overall
sample. Failure to obtain parental permission reduced the
sample to 78 fourth and 81 eighth graders, and absences from
school and failure to respond to individual questions resulted in
a small amount of additional attrition varying from analysis to
analysis. The questionnaire contained questions about the
child’s information sources for Watergate, a 13-point information scale, evaluations of Nixon and other figures, and questions
about party affiliations and political efficacy.
The May study was concerned less with actual changes due to
Watergate than with the interrelationships among variables
The first
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[411]
locating differences
in those results. Full details of the
fmdings
here; they are available elsewhere (Hawkins,
1974), but overall patterns of results will be reported here.
are
not
our concern
_
JULY STUDY
July 1973, immediately after John Dean;s devastating
testimony before the Ervin committee, a questionnaire was
mailed to all fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade parochial school
children who had answered the October 1972 election questionnaire and whose parents had previously responded to a
comparable questionnaire (considerably reducing the potential
sample). Complete questionnaires were returned by 27 fourth
graders (42%), 35 eighth graders (39%) and 41 twelfth graders
(35%). The low response rates do make the representativeness
of this sample suspect, but comparisons between the subsample
responding to the mail questionnaire and the full sample on
items from the October 1972 questionnaire revealed no
significant differences on measures such a5 evaluations of Nixon
and Agnew, perceptions of differences between the two
political parties, and expressed candidate preference.
Questions asked in the July survey included Watergate-related
mass and interpersonal communication behavior, evaluations of
the press’s role in Watergate, the perceived importance of
Watergate and government honesty, evaluations of Nixon and
his role in Watergate, and measures of the child’s feelings of
political efficacy.
Partly by design and partly because of the small sample size,
the July study was much less concerned with predictor variables
than was the May study, using only grade, attention to
Watergate news, and interpersonal communication about Watergate. However, the two months of additional revelations place
the July study in a much better position to look for Watergate’s
effects directly by comparing the children’s responses with their
answers of the previous October.
In
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[412]
RESULTS
Findings of the two studies are presented in terms of six
general dependent variables: (1) amount of communication
about Watergate and ’(2) knowledge about the Watergate affair,
measured in the May study; (3) perceptions of President
Nixon’s involvement in the affair and (4) evaluations of
President Nixon, measured in both studies; (5) concern with
honesty in government as an important national issue, measured
in the July study; and (6) feelings of political efficacy,
measured in both studies.
In addition to grade and party preference, predictor variables
were constructed from Likert-type scales measuring things such
as amount of family concept- and socio-orientation, and the
child’s interest in politics, communication behavior about
politics, and mass media use for political information. Summative indices based on these scales were dichotomized using
median splits, except that the indices of communication
behaviors and interest in politics were trichotomized in the May
study. Analyses of the May results were conducted via planned
comparisons among means (see Hays, 1963); the July study
used analysis of variance supplemented by t-tests (one-tailed to
test change scores against zero, two-tailed elsewhere).
COMMUNICATION ABOUT WATERGATE
Children in the May sample were asked to identify all their
of information about Watergate. Choices included
sources
mother, father, teacher, radio, television, newspaper or magazines, and friends. On the average, children named about two
media sources for each interpersonal source. None of the
predictor variables (grade, family communication pattern, communication behavior, and so on) located differences in relative
reliance on mass versus interpersonal sources.
When the number of sources of information was used as an
index of the amount of communication about Watergate,
however, some of our hypotheses about differences among
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[413]
children were confirmed. Out predictions and findings are
summarized in Table 1 (along with those for knowledge of
Watergate). Older children. those interested in politics, and
those who, in October, had been relatively frequent discussers
of politics and users of the mass media for political information,
generally participated more in communication about Watergate.
Equally important, however, are some of our null results. The
lack of greater communication by children whose families
emphasize concept-orientation is surprising, since this relationship has been consistent throughout the family communication
literature (see McLeod and Chaffee, 1972). Similarly, while we
expected greater communication about this affective, partisan
TABLE 1
Summary of Prediction and Results: Watergate
Communication and Knowledge (May study)
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[414]
by Democrats, we were unable to locate such differences
even among the older children and those highest on socio-orientation, where we expected party differences to be most salient.
event
°
KNOWLEDGE OF WATERGATE
Children in the May study answered 7 multiple-choice and 6
true-false items that asked what the affair was about in general,
and in particular who was involved, and the names and events of
the first week of televised hearings. The possible range of scores
was 0 to 13 and the actual range was 2 to 13. As shown in Table
1, predictions for knowledge were identical to those for amount
of communication, and the results were almost identical. Thus,
as for communication about Watergate, it is age, interest in
politics, and past political communication that locate greater
knowledge. Concept-orientation and the affective variables of
party preference and socio-orientation again locate no differences in knowledge about this affect-laden event.
NIXON’S INVOLVEMENT
Children in both studies were asked which of five statements
about President Nixon’s involvement in Watergate were true;
these ranged from &dquo;He ordered the Watergate spying,&dquo; to &dquo;He
just found out recently and is now anxious to get all the facts
out in the open.&dquo; The means in Table 2 indicate that the May
sample placed him somewhat nearer to &dquo;He didn’t find out until
after, but helped keep the secret,&dquo; than to &dquo;He just found out
recently, but would like to have as few facts as possible become
known.&dquo; The month of June, with the Ervin committee
proceedings, seems to have brought with it an increase in the
perceived culpability of Nixon. That is, the similar sample of
children in July assigned greater involvement to Nixon, moving
toward &dquo;He didn’t order the spying, but he knew about it
before it happened.&dquo; Thus, it is clear that children in our
samples believed Nixon to be at least somewhat involved even
immediately after the first week of televised hearings, and that
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[415]
TABLE 2
Mean
Ratings of Nixon’. Involvement in Watergate,
by Grade
NOTE: Higher scores indicate greater perceived culpability of Nixon. See text for
wording of five statements representing points on this scale.
were even more likely to believe him culpable by the
middle of the summer.
Table 3 presents predictions and results for differences
among the children in the degree of blame assigned to the
president. In May Democrats in general, Democrats who
discussed politics and Republicans who did not, and children
from families not emphasizing socio-orientation who knew
about the events of Watergate were all more likely to assign
Nixon an active role in Watergate. Only three of these
hypotheses were tested in July; the eighth graders and those
who attended to Watergate news believed the president to be
more deeply involved. In addition, many of the negative results
involving socio-orientation and party preferences disguise predicted patterns of means that were not strong enough to reach
statistical significance; we will return to these later.
they
EVALUATIONS OF NIXON
In October, May, and July, children evaluated President
Nixon using five seven-point semantic differential scales (wise,
fair, good, strong, and honest). A change score was computed
for each subject and the mean change scores from 1972 to 1973
are presented in Table 4. For all groups, evaluations of the
president clearly decreased from 1972 levels, and there is
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[416]
TABLE’3
Summary of Predictions and ftetutb-.
Nixon’s Invohement in Watergate
NOTE : Where there is
no
entry, the prediction
was
not te~~~ in the
July rept!e~tio~
further suggestion that this decrease continued between May
and July (although we cannot test this with our nonindependent samples, which only partially overlap).
Both for evaluations of Nixon and for opinions of his
involvement, a number of tests involving party preference and
socio-orientation, in interaction with other variables, showed
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[417]
TABLE 4
Mean Changes from Pre- to Post-Waterpte:
Evaluations of Nixon
NOTE: Entries are change scores from October 1972 to the indicated month in ~&73t
Negative scores mean less favorable evaluations of Nixon on seven-point scales (see
or better by one-taited t-test.
text). All scores in this table differ from zero at p <.05
the
predicted patterns of means, but did not reach statistical
significance. In the twelve tests of interactions, one would
expect means to be in the predicted relationship pattern three
times simply by chance, but actually eleven of the twelve were,
giving a chi-square of 28.44 (df 1; p < .005).~ Thus, while
nothing can be said about the specific relationships, it should be
clear in general that party preferences and socio-orientation
played a role in the formation or change of attitudes about
President Nixon by setting the stage within which other
variables such as media use, knowledge of Watergate, and
interest in politics could work.
It is clear, then, that as early as May 1973, young children
were reacting to the Watergate crisis by viewing President Nixon
less favorably and by assigning him various degrees of culpability for the scandal. By July their reactions were even more
negative. And while there were a few small differences among
children in their reactions, it should also be emphasized that
these differences were in degree and not in kind. All groups of
children examined decreased their evaluations, and no group
believed the president to be wholly candid.
=
CONCERN WITH HONESTY IN GOVERNMENT
In October and July subjects were asked to pick three
problems out of identical lists of sixteen as being the country’s
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[418]
three most important problems. In October no fourth grader
listed &dquo;honesty in government,&dquo; but 21% listed it in July,
making it the fifth most important problem (trailing pollution,
drugs, taxes, and the cost of living). For eighth graders, the
problem moved from 3% to 31%, putting it in fourth place
(after pollution, cost of living, and drugs). Of the twelfth
graders, 24% listed honesty in government in October, and 60%
in July, making it a close third behind the cost of living and
pollution.
It appears that younger children were less concerned with the
issue than were older children, and this fits well with their lower
communication and knowledge scores. On the other hand, they
did react to Watergate by blaming Nixon; possibly the process
of abstracting the problem of honesty in government from the
specific events was too difficult for the younger children. At
any rate, the issue did move from obscurity to importance in all
groups of children’s perceptions during the Watergate period.
PERCEIVED POLITICAL EFFICACY
Political efficacy is eonceived of as a belief that one’s own
political participation will have some effect in the political
system. As such, it is a general concept whose measurement is
not event-specific. Thus, any effects of Watergate on measures
of political efficacy suggest a wide generalization within the
child’s conceptions of politics. In addition, since political
efficacy would seem to be directly linked to political participaif
tion, any decline in efficacy is cause for concern,
the decline occurs among children still preparing for political
participation (see Hess and Torney, 1967).
In October, May, and July subjects agreed or disagreed with
two items (five-point scales) that were summed to form an
index of political efficacy. The items stated that those in
government do not care what people like the child’s family
think, and that the actions of government are as inevitable and
impossible to affect as the weather. The mean change scores
presented in Table 5 indicate that there was little or no change
especially
.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[419]
TA8LE 5
Mean Changes from Pre- to Post-Watergate
:
Political Efficacy
NOTE: Entries are change scores from October 1972 to the indicated month in 1973.
Negative scores indicate lower perception of political efficacy on five-point scales (see
text).
significantly different from zero at .01 level (one-tailed)
b. significantly different from zero at .10 level (one-tailed)
a.
in
efficacy initially, but that continued hearings and revelations,
the additional time in which children could think
through the abstract implications of specific revelations, led to a
decreased sense of political efficacy. And although the large
variances of the change scores precluded significant differences
among groups of children, the means in Table 5 suggest that
younger children were more affected than older.
as
well
as
DISCUSSION
Implicit in the order in which the outcome variables have
been presented is a dimension of specificity or immediacy with
respect to Watergate. That is, participation in communication
about Watergate can be seen as necessary and prior to
knowledge of the events. Similarly, to the extent that new
attitudes or changes in attitudes result from the child thinking
over information about Watergate and actively rearranging
beliefs, some sort of knowledge may be prior to the formation
of attitudes as well. And just as communication and knowledge
may precede attitudes in general, those attitudes more specifically derivable from an event may precede those that require a
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[420]
great deal of abstraction by the child. Thus,
one
might expect
change more rapidly than the child’s
feelings of personal political efficacy.
Our results provide some support for this conceptualization
in that the children’s feelings of political efficacy were
unaffected in May but had decreased by July. But given data
from only two points in time early in the Watergate affair, our
conceptualization serves basically to guide our interpretations
and is not itself testable. With these expectations about
relationships among effects, what is striking about our results is
the extent to which Watergate affected all of our subjects. Even
those children one would not expect to be particularly attuned
to a political event (e.g., fourth graders, and those reporting
little interest in politics) listed multiple sources of information
about Watergate, knew many of its details, and expressed
opinions about actors and events.
Although we lack experimental controls and thus cannot be
sure about causation, children’s evaluations of Nixon, their
notions about the importance of government honesty, and their
feelings of personal political efficacy clearly did change, and the
stimulus of Watergate seems a reasonable candidate for mediaattitudes about Nixon to
of that change. This impression is bolstered by the
continuing decrease in evaluations of Nixon from May to July
and the increasing level of involvement attributed to him. It
appears that the events of Watergate did make a considerable
impression on our subjects and thus constitute a potentially
important political socialization event.
Turning from the overall impact of Watergate on children,
our second goal was to locate differences among children in
their reactions, with predictions based on previous theory and
research in communication and political socialization. The
mixture of confirmation and disconfirmation of our predictions
is itself revealing. Age, previous political communication, and
interest in politics functioned as expected for communication
about and knowledge of Watergate, but family communication
and party preference did not. We are at a loss to explain the
failure to replicate previous findings for concept-orientation,
tor
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[421]
but there may be a good explanation for the failure of
predictions for party preference and socio-orientation.
Predictions involving these two variables
were
based
on
our
the
relationship between their affective character and the affective?
partisan nature of Watergate. It might be tempting to argue that
the children were unable to translate their party affiliations into
attitudes and actions, or that Watergate was too abstract for
socio-orientation to make affective relationships more salient.
But such a position is made untenable by the importance of
socio-orientation and party preference in interaction with other
variables in locating differences in attitudinal responses to
Watergate. One is left with the conclusion that these children
could not avoid hearing and knowing about Watergate, that it
was an overwhelming event, but that once the information was
acquired, there was some leeway in interpreting it to fit
preconceptions and predispositions. Still, the effect of these
locator variables was only that of moderating: some groups of
children did not blame Nixon quite as much or did not decrease
their evaluations quite as much as did others. Nevertheless, the
direction of change remains the same.
In short, it appears that exposure to information about
Watergate was pervasive and relatively inescapable. Given the
nature of much of that information, children’s image of the
president, and to some extent of the government, was severely
tarnished. And perhaps even more ominous, their faith in their
own ability to have an effect on government decreased.
The president that these children blamed for Watergate is out
of office; thus, negative evaluations specifically of him need no
longer be relevant for the political system. But if the decrease in
political efficacy has persisted, or if distrust of Nixon generalized to other political figures, there may be real cause for
concern for the future of the American political system. On the
other hand, an increased concern with honesty in government
and a greater watchfulness of politicians could be a positive
force in the future. Our data come from early in the Watergate
affair and cannot tell us what the long-range outcomes will be.
But we believe our results do present cause for concern that
should motivate further research.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016
[422]
NOTES
1. The measures of political mass media use differ somewhat here. The May study
performed analyses using both the October 1972 index summed from three items and
number of media sources information for Watergate itself. Results generally
paralleled closely, but the index specific to Watergate appeared to be a weaker
measure, so results are not reported for it. The July media index is derived from a
three-item set combining measures of attention and interest that correlate well with
October media use. Analyses using the October measure were performed, and results
were substantially the same as those using the Watergate index reported here.
2. While the two-by-two interaction comparison is +1, -1, -1, +1, some
relationships among the means that could produce a large F-ratio would be a reversal
of the hypothesis. For example, if larger differences between Democrats and
Republicans are predicted for high socio-orientation than for low, finding larger
differences in low socio-orientation would produce an F-ratio indicating reversal of
the predicted relationship. In general, if one is testing the hypothesis that the effect
of the column variable is concentrated within one row, there are eight possible
two-by-two tables that can be constructed using the following three row relationships : -1 +1; +1 -1; 0 0 (omitting the 0 0; 0 0 table as meaningless). Only two of
these eight tables would tend to confirm the prediction.
REFERENCES
CHAFFEE, S. H., L. S. WARD, and L. P. TIPTON (1970) "Mass communication and
political socialization." Journalism Q. 47: 647-659.
DENNIS, J. (1973) Socialization to Politics: A Reader. New York: John Wiley.
FRANKLIN, V. T. (1972) "The role of the elementary school teacher in the political
socialization process." Ph.D. dissertation. University of California, Berkeley.
GREENSTEIN, F. I. (1965) Children and Politics. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
HAWKINS, R. P. (1974) "Children’s acquisition of current events information in the
context of family, peers, media use, and pre-existing attitudes." Ph.D. dissertation. Stanford University.
HAYS, W. L. (1963) Statistics for Psychologists. New York: Holt, Rinehart &
Winston.
HESS, R. D. and J. V. TORNEY (1967) The Development of Political Attitudes in
Children. Chicago: Aldine.
HYMAN, H. H. (1959) Political Socialization. New York: Free Press.
JENNINGS, M. K. and R. G. NIEMI (1973) "The transmission of political values
from parent to child," in J. Dennis (ed.) Socialization to Politics: A Reader. New
York: John Wiley.
McLEOD, J. M. and S. H. CHAFFEE (1972) "The construction of social reality," in
J. T. Tedeschi (ed.) The Social Influence Processes. Chicago: Aldine.
ROBERTS, D. F., R. P. HAWKINS, and S. PINGREE (1975) "Do the mass media
play a role in political socialization?" Australian & New Zealand J. of Sociology
11: 37-43.
TOLLEY, H. (1973) Children and the War. New York: Teacher’s College Press.
Downloaded from apr.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on March 3, 2016