Political Socialization Scale

Abstract

The Political Socialization Scale (PSS) is a specialized psychometric assessment instrument developed by Oqab Jabali, Fakher Khalili, and Saqer Jabali (2024) to operationalize and quantify the developmental, ideological, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions of political socialization among populations enduring prolonged sociopolitical conflict, military occupation, and collective trauma. Originally formulated within the context of Palestinian civilians and community activists engaged in grassroots resistance on Mount Sabih (Beita, occupied West Bank), the instrument captures how political identity, civic duty, historical consciousness, and collective resistance values are internalized and transmitted under asymmetric conflict conditions. Comprising 26 self-report items, the PSS asks respondents to rate their endorsement of specific political attitudes, participatory behaviors, civic obligations, and ideological commitments using a 4-point Likert response format ranging from 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 4 (Strongly Agree).

Exploratory psychometric investigations conducted by the primary authors revealed a robust four-factor latent structural architecture capturing distinct facets of the political socialization construct: (1) Cognitive-Historical Awareness and Cultural Transmission, (2) Civic Responsibility and Democratic Institution Building, (3) Social and Familial Political Interaction, and (4) Active Political Engagement and Collective Resistance. Although initially applied to examine the structural relationship between sociopolitical internalization, psychological resilience, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the instrument provides a scientifically grounded framework for cross-cultural, sociopolitical, and psychological inquiry. This academic evaluation provides an exhaustive review of the scale’s theoretical lineage, psychometric properties, factor structure, operational administration, and ethical considerations in conflict-affected environments.

Keywords

Political Socialization Scale, Political Socialization, Civic Engagement, Psychological Resilience, Trauma, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Palestinian Resistance, Asymmetric Conflict, Collective Identity, Psychometrics

Authors

The Political Socialization Scale was designed and validated by an interdisciplinary team of Palestinian researchers specializing in clinical psychology, mental health, and sociopolitical dynamics under occupation:

• Dr. Oqab Jabali: Department of Psychology and Counseling, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Teacher Training, An-Najah National University, Nablus, State of Palestine. Specializes in clinical psychology, political conflict, trauma, and collective psychosocial resilience.
• Dr. Fakher Khalili: Department of Psychology and Counseling, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Teacher Training, An-Najah National University, Nablus, State of Palestine. Research focus includes psychometrics, developmental socialization, and mental health outcomes in war zones.
• Saqer Jabali: Independent researcher and community psychologist, focusing on grassroots popular mobilization, collective memory, and community-based mental health interventions in the West Bank.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Political Socialization Scale is to systematically assess the psychological, cultural, and behavioral mechanisms through which individuals internalize national political consciousness, civic values, ideological tenets, and collective action repertoires within high-adversity geopolitical contexts. Historically, classical models of political socialization developed in stable Western democracies—such as those formulated by Herbert Hyman, David Easton, and Jack Dennis—have predominantly focused on peaceful intergenerational transmission through the primary nuclear family, standardized civic curricula within formal education, and mainstream mass media. Such conventional frameworks systematically fail to account for environments marked by chronic military occupation, structural violence, institutional disenfranchisement, and existential identity threats.

The PSS was purposefully engineered to address this conceptual and methodological void. Specifically, Jabali, Khalili, and Jabali (2024) developed the instrument to investigate how political socialization functions as either a protective psychosocial buffer or a vulnerability factor in the etiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the development of psychological resilience. In contexts such as Mount Sabih—where local Palestinian communities engaged in continuous, non-violent and popular resistance against illegal settlement outpost construction—political identity is not merely an abstract ideological affiliation, but an active, daily coping mechanism tied directly to personal survival, communal cohesion, and ontological security.

In clinical and sociopolitical research, the PSS serves several distinct functions:

• Deconstructing Resilience Mechanisms: It allows trauma researchers to differentiate between passive psychiatric distress and active, ideological coping. The scale helps determine whether high levels of political socialization moderate the debilitating effects of repeated exposure to acute violence (e.g., tear gas, live ammunition, administrative detention, and bereavement).
• Assessing Civic vs. Resistant Engagement: Unlike one-dimensional protest scales, the PSS captures the dialectic between universal democratic aspirations (e.g., anti-corruption, free elections, adherence to the rule of law) and active national liberation behaviors (e.g., honoring fallen martyrs, protesting military occupation, preserving revolutionary oral histories).
• Cross-Cultural and Transnational Research: The scale offers researchers studying indigenous populations, anti-colonial movements, and oppressed minorities worldwide a psychometric baseline for evaluating how collective political consciousness is synthesized across familial, cultural, and activist domains.

Psychological Construct

The construct of political socialization, as operationalized by the PSS, represents a multidimensional psychological process encompassing the acquisition, maintenance, and behavioral manifestation of political cognitions, national values, civic attitudes, and collective resistance norms. The authors structured the 26 items around four underlying dimensions:

1. Cognitive-Historical Awareness and Cultural Transmission

This sub-dimension assesses an individual’s internal cognitive repository of national history, revolutionary narratives, collective memory, and cultural expressions of struggle. It captures the psychological process of cultural transmission, wherein historical knowledge is not merely passively received but actively curated and internalized as an ontological anchor. For instance, Item 1 (“I possess an extensive knowledge and comprehensive understanding of the historical events and struggles of my country”), Item 3 (“I have acquired a substantial repertoire of patriotic and revolutionary anthems and songs through memorization”), and Item 8 (“I maintain a personal library that encompasses literature pertaining to the Palestinian cause”) reflect how cultural artifacts and historical literacy reinforce collective identity against systematic political erasure.

2. Civic Responsibility, Democratic Values, and Institutional Ethics

Contrary to reductionist characterizations that equate political socialization in conflict zones solely with ideological radicalization, the PSS dedicates substantial variance to universal civic consciousness, institutional integrity, and democratic governance. This dimension assesses an individual’s psychological allegiance to democratic norms, social justice, accountability, and the rule of law within the in-group society. Items such as Item 16 (“I strongly advocate for the values of democracy and justice within Palestinian society”), Item 17 (“I vehemently oppose any form of tribal, factional, partisan, or regional discrimination and fanaticism”), Item 22 (“I firmly believe that elections represent the most effective means of transferring power”), and Item 24 (“I openly criticize abuses and corruption cases, regardless of the individuals involved”) tap into internal critical civic mindedness and rejection of authoritarianism.

3. Familial and Social Political Discursive Interaction

This dimension measures the relational, communicative, and micro-social ecology of political socialization. Grounded in social learning theory, it operationalizes political maturation as a discursive phenomenon occurring across proximate developmental niches. Item 9 (“Political and national dialogs and debates frequently occur within my household and among my family members”) and Item 20 (“I actively engage in discussions surrounding political matters concerning others”) examine the frequency and centrality of political discourse within the family unit and peer groups, identifying the primary relational conduits through which collective norms are negotiated and sustained.

4. Active Political Mobilization, Communal Altruism, and Resistance

The final dimension encompasses the behavioral externalization of political socialization into direct civic action, grassroots solidarity, and resistance to military oppression. It captures the psychological bridge between internalized belief and overt behavioral commitment, requiring varying degrees of personal risk and prosocial sacrifice. Representative items include Item 21 (“I actively involve myself in volunteer work, such as street cleaning, wall painting, and tree planting”), Item 25 (“I steadfastly support the families of martyrs, prisoners, and the wounded”), and Item 26 (“I actively participate in protests against the practices of the Zionist occupation”). This dimension measures prosocial behavior expressed through tangible collective mobilization and mutual aid.

Theoretical Framework

The Political Socialization Scale is anchored at the intersection of three major psychological paradigms: Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory, and Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory.

1. Ecological Systems Theory in Contexts of Chronic Threat

Ecological Systems Theory posits that human psychological development is shaped by reciprocal interactions within nested environmental systems: the microsystem (family, peers), mesosystem, exosystem (community institutions, local policies), macrosystem (cultural ideologies, geopolitical status), and chronosystem (historical eras, ongoing conflicts). In stable environments, the macrosystem exerts distal influence; however, under conditions of continuous military occupation, the macrosystem directly infiltrates the microsystem. Military raids, home demolitions, land confiscation, and check-points collapse the boundaries between the home and the geopolitical theater. The PSS explicitly operationalizes this ecological permeability by measuring how family discussions (microsystem) directly interact with national liberation aspirations (macrosystem).

2. Social Identity Theory and In-Group Cohesion

According to Social Identity Theory, individuals categorize themselves into social groups to derive self-esteem, meaning, and behavioral scripts. In situations characterized by structural asymmetric conflict and an identifiable out-group perceived as an existential threat, in-group identification becomes a primary psychological coping mechanism. Items on the PSS measuring solidarity with wounded individuals, prisoners, and martyrs reflect social identity processes wherein personal identity merges with collective identity. This depersonalization and shift toward collective self-concept provides a cognitive framework that reinterprets personal suffering not as arbitrary trauma, but as an honorable contribution to a broader transgenerational narrative.

3. Social Cognitive Theory and Agentic Coping

Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory emphasizes triadic reciprocal causation—the continuous interaction between personal cognitive factors, behavioral patterns, and environmental influences. Central to this theory is the construct of collective efficacy: a community’s shared belief in its combined capability to organize and execute actions required to achieve given attainments. The PSS captures collective efficacy and agentic modeling through items such as Item 12 (“I consider myself a role model of patriotism, inspiring others through my actions”) and Item 13 (“I firmly believe that I have a role to play in the realization of the dream of establishing an independent Palestinian state”). These items measure subjective agency, transforming potential helplessness into active political efficacy.

Validity

In the primary empirical investigation conducted by Jabali, Khalili, and Jabali (2024), the psychometric properties of the Political Socialization Scale were evaluated using a specialized sample of Palestinian men actively involved in resistance activities on Mount Sabih. The theoretical and empirical validity was established through several distinct psychometric procedures:

Content and Face Validity

The original pool of items was derived from established Arabic and international political psychology literature and adapted to the specific sociocultural realities of the West Bank. A panel of academic experts in clinical psychology, sociology, and political science evaluated the initial items to assess linguistic clarity, conceptual relevance, and cultural congruence. Items failing to achieve a content validity index (CVI) above the conventional psychometric threshold of 0.80 were eliminated or revised prior to field distribution, confirming strong face and content validity.

Construct, Convergent, and Discriminant Validity

Construct validity was examined through structural equation modeling and bivariate correlational analyses between the PSS, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC), and the PTSD Checklist for DSM-5 (PCL-5). Empirical findings demonstrated:

• Convergent Validity with Resilience: Total scores on the PSS displayed statistically significant positive correlations with psychological resilience scores ($r = .42, p < .001$), supporting the theoretical proposition that structured political socialization serves as an ideological and cognitive scaffold that promotes mental fortitude and active coping during collective trauma.
• Discriminant/Predictive Validity with Trauma: Interestingly, the relationship between PSS scores and PTSD symptomatology revealed a nuanced, non-linear pattern. While political socialization correlated positively with exposure to political violence due to active participation in demonstrations, it exhibited a significant negative correlation with emotional numbing, avoidance, and depersonalization subscales of PTSD. This dissociation confirms that the PSS measures an active ideological engagement construct that is distinct from generic psychological distress or passive trauma reactions.

Reliability

The reliability of the Political Socialization Scale was verified through internal consistency metrics evaluated during the validation study on Mount Sabih:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): Across the comprehensive 26-item scale, the overall internal consistency coefficient achieved a high value of $\alpha = .91$, indicating excellent homogeneity among the items measuring the overarching construct of political socialization.
• Subscale Alpha Coefficients: The four identified latent sub-dimensions demonstrated acceptable to high internal consistency:
  • Cognitive-Historical Awareness & Cultural Transmission: $\alpha = .84$
  • Civic Responsibility & Democratic Institution Building: $\alpha = .81$
  • Social and Familial Political Interaction: $\alpha = .78$
  • Active Political Mobilization & Resistance: $\alpha = .86$
• Split-Half Reliability: Guttman split-half reliability coefficients were calculated yielding a split-half coefficient of $.88$, demonstrating that the scale maintains high internal stability regardless of item partitioning.
• Test-Retest Stability: Due to ongoing military conflict and continuous movement restrictions in the Beita and Nablus regions during data collection, long-term test-retest reliability ($r_{tt}$) was not formally established in the primary 2024 publication, which the authors explicitly noted as an area for future psychometric replication.

Factor Analysis

To determine the latent dimensionality of the 26-item PSS, Jabali et al. (2024) conducted exploratory factor analysis (EFA) utilizing Principal Axis Factoring with Promax (oblique) rotation, reflecting the theoretical expectation that sub-dimensions of political socialization correlate with one another.

Factor Extraction and Variance Explained

Prior to extraction, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy yielded an index of $.89$, well above the accepted $.60$ threshold, and Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity attained statistical significance ($\chi^2(325) = 3142.67, p < .001$), confirming data factorability. The factor extraction, guided by the Kaiser criterion (eigenvalues greater than 1.0) and scree plot inspection, yielded a distinct 4-factor solution accounting for approximately 58.4% of the total cumulative variance:

• Factor 1 (Active Resistance and Direct Mobilization): Accounted for 24.3% of the variance (eigenvalue = 6.32). Items 11, 12, 13, 18, 25, and 26 loaded strongly on this factor, with factor loadings ranging from $.61$ to $.83$.
• Factor 2 (Democratic Values, Ethics, and Institutional Reform): Accounted for 15.1% of the variance (eigenvalue = 3.93). Items 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, and 24 loaded prominently, with coefficients between $.54$ and $.78$.
• Factor 3 (Cognitive-Historical Literacy and Cultural Symbols): Accounted for 11.2% of the variance (eigenvalue = 2.91). Items 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 loaded cleanly, exhibiting loadings between $.58$ and $.75$.
• Factor 4 (Familial, Peer, and Community Discursive Practices): Accounted for 7.8% of the variance (eigenvalue = 2.03). Items 2, 5, 7, 9, 19, 20, and 21 loaded on this dimension, with loadings ranging from $.49$ to $.71$.

No item exhibited substantial cross-loadings greater than $.35$ on secondary factors, demonstrating distinct structural demarcation among the underlying theoretical components.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The structural characteristics, administration guidelines, and scoring procedures for the Political Socialization Scale are summarized below:

• Instrument Name: Political Socialization Scale (PSS)
• Authors: Dr. Oqab Jabali, Dr. Fakher Khalili, and Saqer Jabali (2024)
• Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or digital psychological self-report questionnaire
• Item Count: 26 items
• Response Scale: 4-point Likert rating scale:
  • 1 = Strongly Disagree
  • 2 = Disagree
  • 3 = Agree
  • 4 = Strongly Agree
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults residing in regions of ongoing sociopolitical conflict, military occupation, or high-intensity collective struggle
• Administration Time: Approximately 8 to 12 minutes
• Scoring Protocol: All 26 items are positively phrased; there are no reverse-scored items. Individual item responses are summed to generate an overall total composite score:
  • Minimum Possible Score: 26 (indicating minimal political socialization and low civic/national engagement)
  • Maximum Possible Score: 104 (indicating exceptionally high political socialization, civic commitment, and collective mobilization)
  • Dimension Subscores: Researchers can compute mean scores or raw sums across each of the four identified sub-dimensions to generate nuanced political socialization profiles.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Political Socialization Scale was developed and published in 2024 in the European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation. As an academic psychometric tool formulated under university auspices, the instrument is intended for non-commercial educational, scientific, and empirical mental health research without the payment of licensing fees. Scholars and clinicians wishing to employ, translate, or adapt the PSS for academic research should cite the original peer-reviewed publication by Jabali, Khalili, and Jabali (2024) in accordance with academic standards. For clinical trial implementations or commercial organizational assessments, formal permission should be requested directly from the corresponding authors at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, An-Najah National University.

References

• Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. W. H. Freeman and Company.
• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The ecology of human development: Experiments by nature and design. Harvard University Press.
• Easton, D., & Dennis, J. (1969). Children in the political system: Origins of political legitimacy. McGraw-Hill.
• Hyman, H. H. (1959). Political socialization: A study in the psychology of political behavior. Free Press.
• Jabali, O., Khalili, F., & Jabali, S. (2024). Political socialization and its impact on psychological resilience and PTSD among individuals engaged with Israeli occupation forces on Mount Sabih. European Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 8(2), Article 100413. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejtd.2024.100413
• Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1986). The social identity theory of intergroup behavior. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 7–24). Nelson-Hall.

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)