Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Spring 5-14-2015

Faculty Advisor(s)

David Shafie

Abstract

In the midst of a rapid decline of an active youth in the political scene, it would seem appropriate that the causes of such a phenomenon would be researched in an effort to find an explanation and possibly a solution to this problem. Previous research on this issue has yielded various possible factors. I intend to focus on the education aspect, specifically a civic education and how that translates to our youth being more politically active. The question posed in regards to this issue is are civically educated individuals more inclined to be politically active? While other research has brought up other valid contributing factors, education seems to be the more consistent determinant of political involvement. Hence, I plan to strengthen that relationship in this paper. I hypothesize two possible outcomes in my examination of civic education's role in political involvement in our youth. The first being that a civic education leads to a greater identification with the needs of a community. Secondly, once those needs are identified, those who are civically educated will turnout to vote on policies directly related to those needs. The data set I intend to test these hypotheses against is ICPSR Youth Post-Election Survey conducted by the Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Engagement (2012). In theory, there will be a conclusion that aligns with my previously mentioned hypotheses in order to to draw greater attention to the need for quality civic education to create politically active youth.

Comments

Presented at the Spring 2015 Student Research Day at Chapman University.

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