ABSTRACT
In 1959 and again in 1971, Melikian and Diab sought to determine the hierarchy of group affiliations of Arab students at the American University of Beirut. In the first study, they found that students ranked family first, followed by ethnic group, religion, citizenship, and political part in order of preference (3). No relationship was found between the order of hierarchy and the variables of sex, religion, and political orientation. In the second study, they found no major change in the order of preference for the group as a whole, although they did find some differences in ranking by sex and political affiliation of the students (4). In 1977 these two studies were replicated in a different cultural milieu, Kuwait, where university students ranked religion first, followed by family, citizenship, and national origin (1). On the basis of other studies in Kuwait, however, it was suspected that some group affiliations may be changing among younger students (2), and the present study was conducted in 1976-77 to determine the hierarchy of group affiliations in junior high school students in Kuwait.
