Self-attribution of social and role features indicates a high level of collective identity and social self-awareness of the individual. According Griffo et al. open-ended questionnaires are an effective tool in studying a person’s self-concept [1]. Kuhn & McPartland’s Twenty Statements Test is a brilliant representative of this group of methods and requires the respondents to give twenty short answers to the question “Who am I?”, choosing the words or phrases which first come to mind [2]. A significant advantage of this test is that it enables one to assess an individual’s self-definition through his/her personal perspective.
In Boryshevskyi’s structure of national self-awareness, the self-concept plays a crucial role; therefore, the employment of Kuhn & McPartland’s Twenty Statements Test is an inseparable method of a comprehensive analysis of national self-awareness [3]. As Sokolova puts it, Kuhn & McPartland’s Twenty Statements Test aims to determine not only the level of national self-identification, but also the proportion between personal and individual as well as social and role qualities that the respondent attributes to him-/herself. In addition, this questionnaire helps to determine the significance of belonging to one’s nation [4].
The 2024 research on the development of national self-awareness of Ukrainian university students focused on the impact of literature on this process. 82 students aged 19 to 23 (M=19.6) participated in the experiment. The experimental group took a literary course where they studied multiple works of historical fiction. The research has shown interesting results concerning personal and individual as well as social and role qualities which the participants ascribe to themselves.
The study has recorded positive dynamics in the predominance of mentions of social and role features. In the experimental group, such growth is more intense (by 11% more) than in the control group (6.6%). At the same time, an almost simultaneous decrease in the ranking position of mentions of nationality/citizenship (from 3.16 to 3.39 in the experimental group and from 2.9 to 3.18 in the control group) could be observed.
Furthermore, special attention is paid to changes in the number of students who did not mention the social and role characteristics connected with national self-awareness. While the value remained unchanged in the control group, respondents from the experimental group demonstrated a fourfold decrease in the number of those who did not mention such options as “Ukrainian”, “citizen”, etc. – from 9% to 2%.
In addition, it is worth noting that the frequency of mentions of social and role characteristics which are relevant to the study of national self-awareness was preserved in the experimental group. In contrast, the control group saw a noticeable decline of 8%. The increase in the number of students who mentioned the relevant qualities in the experimental group is also worth mentioning. Thus, the answer “Ukrainian” was given by 9% more students than before the experiment; on the contrary, in the control group, the indicator decreased by 2%. The increase in the frequency of the answer “citizen” is even greater – by 19% (for comparison, in the control group, the indicator increased by only 6%).
Noteworthy were also the changes in other social and role positions. For example, regarding the frequency of answering “brother/sister,” the control group respondents demonstrated twice as large an increase as in the experimental group (16% and 8%, respectively). In the context of family roles, it is also worth mentioning that the increase in the number of mentions of the feature “son/daughter” (6% more in the experimental group and 8% more in the control group). The synchronous increase in the indicators for the position of “student” is also interesting: 20% in the experimental group and 21% in the control group. Hence, we see that the difference between the experimental and control groups lies precisely in national social and role characteristics, which can be explained by the influence of the formative experiment (i.e. study of historical fiction).
Therefore, the study of historical fiction strengthens the collective identification of the respondents (as exemplified by national self-awareness). It was established that the presented increase in self-attribution of social and role qualities by the subjects of the experiment stemmed from the perception of the literature of this genre.
References:
1. Griffo, R., Lemay, E., & Moreno, A. H. Who Am I? Let Me Think: Assessing the Considered Self-Concept. SAGE Open, 2021. 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211004278.
2. Kuhn M. H., McPartland T. S. An empirical investigation of self-attitudes. American Sociological Review, 1954. 19. Pp. 68–76.
3. Боришевський М. Й. Національна самосвідомість у громадянському становленні особистості Київ : Беркут, 2000. 63 с.
4. Соколова В. Ф. Психологічні особливості розвитку національної самосвідомості студентської молоді засобами української літератури : дис… канд. психол. наук: 19.00.07. Київ, 2005. 196 с.
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