Malaysia’s nation building (2): An empirical study of youth national pride

Low patriotism among a country’s youth population may be associated with some sense of loss of pride in being citizens of the country. This study examined the state of national pride of Malaysian youth based on the degree of their pride in owning a Malaysian identity card. Primary data were gathered from a field survey of 1500 randomly sampled Malaysian youth aged between 15 and 30 distributed over all of the fourteen states. Results of the statistical analysis showed that over 90 per cent of youths from all zones, states, religions, ethnic groups and ages were proud of having a Malaysian identity card and wanted to be known as a Malaysian nationality. This augured well for the continuation of existing patriotism programmes.