Comparing students’ citizenship concepts with Likert-scale

The main concern in this article has been to investigate whether Hong Kong students’ citizenship concepts changed over a 10 year period. Such a methodology based on analyzing responses to the Likert scale was chosen to (1) provide precise results that make valid and reliable conclusions and (2) demonstrate that while an underlying latent trait reflecting democratic values can be identified in the two cohorts of students studied, that the latent trait did undergo subtle changes. This was reflected in the movement (or lack of it) of items along the latent trait. What is known is that Hong Kong students 10 years after the return of Hong Kong to China have strong commitments to democracy: what are less certain about is exactly how this situation developed but perhaps more importantly in the light of the results of this study, how it can be sustained.