The attitudes of university students towards poverty : a quantitative approach

Abstract

This study’s main objective was to investigate whether a relationship exists between the attitudes university level students exhibit towards poverty together with the degrees of different social variables present, which are social empathy, social exclusion, and social dominance orientation. The study also sought to explore whether institutional characteristics in locals would result in mean differences in social behaviours towards impoverished individuals. In total 104 students with an average age of 23 (M= 22.856) participated in a survey, a significance level of p=0.01 was used. It was found that Attitudes Towards Poverty positively correlated with Social Dominance Orientation at rs=0.681 and Social Exclusion at rs=0.664. A weak negative correlation, rs= -0.069 was attained with Social Empathy. Results also indicated that there were significant mean differences between the institutions that students came from. In conclusion, local inferences on such findings are also discussed.