Law abidance leadership education for university students in Hong Kong : subjective outcome evaluation

Abstract

Adolescence is an “age of rebellion” when adolescents challenge authority and break rules on an experimental basis. Hence, it is important to promote law abidance, particularly when we expect young people to become future leaders. In this study, we implemented a 3-hour face-to-face module on law abidance leadership with national security as a part of the contents. To understand the perceptions of university students taking the lecture (N = 1,285), we employed a 26-item post-lecture evaluation questionnaire to conduct subjective outcome evaluation. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) as well as multi-group CFAs based on two randomly selected samples, demonstrated the three dimensions intrinsic to the scale (i.e., lecture attributes, teachers’ qualities, and appreciation of law abidance leadership) replicated the previous findings, hence supporting the construct validity of the instrument. Regarding perceptions of all respondents (N = 985), students generally held positive views on lecture design and delivery. Besides, they agreed that this module benefited their personal development in critical thinking, problem-solving ability, moral competence, interpersonal communication skills, law abidance leadership, and their understandings about the significance of national security. More than 95% of the participants expressed their desire to become law-abiding citizens and take on social responsibility. The qualitative responses also triangulated the quantitative findings, with most of which being positive responses. This study replicated our previous research, and enriched the scientific database on teaching politically sensitive topics in the context of higher education.