P. Macek et al., SOCIAL REPRESENTATIONS OF HUMAN-RIGHTS AMONGST CZECH UNIVERSITY-STUDENTS, Journal of community & applied social psychology, 7(1), 1997, pp. 65-76
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a general legislative fra
mework for democratic societies. Studying the social representations o
f these basic human rights helps to explain how people understand and
assess the basic rights and how these rights relate to everyday life.
Over 400 Czech university students rated the 30 articles of the Declar
ation of Human Rights on various scales (degree of understanding, pers
onal relevance, consequences for individual responsibility, for govern
ment, political parties, etc.). A semantic space was identified in whi
ch concepts (i.e. the Articles of the Declaration) could be located. A
typology (clusters) of articles was then established within that sema
ntic space. A factor analysis of the scales resulted in a two-dimensio
nal solution ('positive attitude' and 'personal influence'). Five clus
ters of assessed articles were identified within this semantic space.
((C) 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)