Patriotism Among Multi-Ethnic Youths in Malaysia

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the youth's perspective on social participation towards the practice of patriotism as well as racial tolerance among the youth from various ethnic groups in Malaysia. The purpose of this study was to examine the contribution of social participation towards the appreciation of patriotism measured using the constructs of feeling proud as a Malaysia, loyal to the nation, sense of belonging, discipline, efforts and productivity. The study is conducted in the form of reviews using questionnaire that can be distributed quickly and efficiently to obtain the data from respondents. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to identify the contribution of social participation variables towards the practice of patriotism among Malaysian youths. Multiple regression analysis (stepwise) shows that social participation variable is the construct that have the most significant correlation (p <0.05) towards the practice of patriotism. The variables of social participation contributed 3.4 per cent towards the practice of patriotism among Malaysian youths (β = 0.220, t = 9,029 and p = 0.000) as well as the highest predictor towards the practice of racial tolerance (β = 0.293, t = 13.725 and p = 0.051) with 34.40 percent. This finding clearly shows the importance of social participation in various activities and programmes to foster a unity spirit among youths. The efforts to encourage the participations of youths from various ethnicities background have to be consistently pursued and enforced especially through promotion via social media as they are Alpha generation.