Knowledge and Understanding in Democracy of the Youths in the Bangkok Metropolis

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to study the level of knowledge and understanding in democracy of the youths in Bangkok metropolis and study the differential level of knowledge and understanding in democracy according to gender, age, education level, family incomes, and occupation of the parents, interesting level in political news, and the participation in political activity. This research is a survey esearch. The sample groups is the youths who live in Bangkok metropolis 2,500 persons from 50 district 50 persons for each district by accidental sampling. Questionnaire is used as a tool in data collection. The statistics by means of percentage, frequency, arithmetic means, standard deviation, and Chi-square. The results are as the following: 1.Knowledge and understanding in democracy. The youths have knowledge and understanding level in democracy totally in middle level. When compare the knowledge and understanding in democracy which in ideal status with political status and daily living status found that most of the youth has knowledge and understanding totally in middle level. When compare in each items that the youths answer "yes" more than 90% is "Man should has equal right." Thai nationality has right to select their religious. The government should role the country with transparency. The transparency for the Government and provable is the most important thing in democracy system. The daily living of each person in democracy system must in the equality of the right such as the equality of life and the equality in freedom. 2.The factors that affecting the knowledge and understanding level which a statistical significance at .05 is age, education level, family incomes, occupation of parents, interesting level in political, and participation in political activity. The gender factors is not imply significantly in statistics. 3.The participation in political activity. The most of the youths have participation in political activity in low level. The political activity that they mostly participated is the voting. Another activity that the youths participated occasionally is inviting the others to vote. Except these two activities, the youths never participated. 4.The interesting in political news. Most of the youth get the news from the mass communication and television is the most communication that they used to follow the news. Newspaper the youths are read sometimes. The youths will discuss or exchange their idea with their friend mostly about entertainment news. For the political news, they will discuss or exchange their idea in less.