Abstract
Engaging youth in the political system has promise for creating social change and ensuring the future of our democracy. Sociopolitical participation—individual and/or collective action to facilitate change—may be biased towards more liberal or Democratic views, which emphasize reform to create social equity. The aim of this study is to test if youth who vary in political ideology (i.e., conservative, liberal) and political identification (i.e., Republican, Democrat) participate at different levels and whether this measurement of sociopolitical participation is in fact biased. These issues were examined among 237 youth attending a large Midwestern high school who generally identified with historically marginalized groups. Results suggest that youth identifying as Republican exhibited slightly higher levels of participation, and that items were not biased by political ideology or identification. Further, political ideology and identification explained less than 5% of the variance in sociopolitical action, suggesting it is largely independent of political leaning.
Highlights
A strong democracy is created when all perspectives and voices are included in the conversation and political process
This indicates that only 2% of the variance in sociopolitical participation was explained by political party identification after accounting for gender, race/ethnicity, and social class. This is comparable to the total contribution in the multiple indicator and multiple causes (MIMIC) model (β = 0.23; 0.232 = 0.05). These results suggest that the MIMIC model and the OLS regression model converge to indicate that Republican-identifying youth engage in more frequent sociopolitical participation, but diverge as to whether these differences are statistically significant
Our results found that political party identification had a significant, yet small association with sociopolitical participation suggesting a trend that Republican identifying youth participate slightly more frequently than those who identify as Democrat
Summary
A strong democracy is created when all perspectives and voices are included in the conversation and political process. With youth, there is great potential for the development of novel ideas and social change when their voices are heard in the political arena (Watts & Flanagan, 2007). In the current political moment, we are observing perspectives from across the political spectrum being shared. From COVID-19 mask bans, critical race theory bans in schools, abortion rights rallies, and protests against racist police force—individuals from diverse political standpoints are speaking out and advocating for their beliefs and issues that are important to them. It is of great importance to understand if the political leanings of diverse youth influence their engagement in the civic and political spheres of society, in an increasingly partisan nation. This research explores whether there are differences in sociopolitical participation depending on how youth identify with either political party (i.e., Republican or Democrat) or political ideology (conservative or liberal) and whether the measurement of this participation is biased
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