University and Political Awareness among Students: A Study in the Role of University in Promoting Political Awareness

Abstract

This research work has aimed at investigating the level of political awareness among the Al Ain University students and the role of the university in boosting it by using the descriptive survey method. Indeed, this study has relied upon the questionnaire and the interview as research tools, as well as on the intentional sample where 10 teaching team members were interviewed to answer the third question, and on the random sample where the questionnaire was distributed among 980 students- males and females to answer the first and second questions. The findings of this study revealed that there was a considerably high level of political awareness among the university students. It was also found that there were differences in the level of political awareness among students depending on the faculty, which favoured the students belonging to faculties of humanities. The differences also favoured male students when the variable was gender and 4th year students when the variable was the year of study. In addition, the study showed that the university played 15 important roles in developing political awareness as was unanimously agreed by the members of the sample. These roles were identified by using recurrences and percentages ranging between 50 and 90%, while those with percentages lower than 50% were not taken into account.   Received: 17 December 2020 / Accepted: 26 January 2021 / Published: 5 March 2021