Student Activism of the 1960s Revisited: A Multivariate Analysis Research Note

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The present study finds that there is very little direct effect on activism by social background, indicating that past studies of student political activism have overemphasized the influence of social background factors. Social background explains more of the variation in political attitudes and beliefs than it explains in political activism. This is not to say the social background is not important or influential in the development of an activist political commitment-merely that no univalent rules exist which link social background characteristics with an individual's involvement in politics. There are too many intervening factors, such as political attitudes and beliefs (and others not accounted for here) which influence individuals in numberless ways. The days of student activism have come and gone. What have we learned? Student activists are among the most studied populations of the 1960s; yet a review of the published literature indicates that the range of research findings is very narrow, indeed. The literature on student activism of the 1960s deals almost exclusively with the social backgrounds and socialization patterns of the protesters. (Block et al., 1968; Braungart, 1966, 1970, 1971; Flacks, 1967; Heist, 1965, 1966; Keniston, 1968; Lyonns, 1965; Soloman and Fishman, 1964; Trent and Craise, 1967; Watts and Whittaker, 1968, to name only the most widely quoted studies). The present research raises this question: How important is social background in the explanation of student political activism? How much variation does social background actually explain? In most studies, activism is defined in terms of behavioral commitment alone: being arrested during a particular event such as the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley, or participating in a sit-in, etc. The present research includes the political attitudes and beliefs of the students, and defines activism in terms of participation in eleven different kinds of political behaviors.