Youth Participation in Psychological Literature: A Semantic Analysis of Scholarly Publications in the PsycInfo Database.

Iana Tzankova,Elvira Cicognani

doi:10.5964/ejop.v15i2.1647

Abstract

The topic of youth participation in the public sphere has received increasing attention within recent psychological research. The literature remains somewhat fragmented between different conceptualizations varying in their specificity or broadness. The present study aims to map the current state of debate in psychology regarding youth civic and political participation and to identify the prevalent themes that characterize the research in the discipline from 1990 to 2016. A semantic content analysis with the software T-Lab was performed on a corpus of 1,777 publications retrieved from the PsycInfo database. The results highlight the increasing number of academic contributions on the topic, confirming the growing importance of the issue within psychology. The study sheds light on the spheres of participation, in which the discipline has attempted to make a contribution, namely: traditional and online political context, institutional civic education, adolescent development, and rights-based activism. Moreover, the findings reveal the existing opposing priorities of research that focus either on the explanation of specific forms of involvement or on the formation of future citizens. Within the thematic attention to young people’s civic and political development, there seem to be two general approaches that see youth in divergent ways: as citizens whose civic capacities are to be fostered or as targets for top-down training interventions. This systematic thematic review calls attention to the disparate ways in which youth participation is being addressed in psychology and highlights the need for greater theoretical integration in the field of study.

Highlights

The topic of youth participation in the public sphere has received increasing attention within recent psychological research
The research was carried out on 30 August 2016, using each of the following terms: “active citizenship,” “civic engagement” or “political engagement,” “civic participation” or “political participation,” “activism.”i The key terms that were used were chosen by the authors as most relevant in youth participation literature that treats the public civic and political sphere
The increase of research on youth participation is in line with the growing attention on fostering citizens’ relationship with the public sphere on the international political stage as evidenced by numerous policies that address the issue in Western democracies

Summary

Introduction

The topic of youth participation in the public sphere has received increasing attention within recent psychological research. The present study, based on a dissertation research by the first author (Tzankova, 2018), seeks to obtain an overall image of the current prevalent ideas associated with the topic of youth civic and political participation in psychology Concepts such as activism, political participation, civic engagement, social participation, community participation, active citizenship, and many others, have been used at times synonymously and at times distinctly to denote various ways of getting involved in societal or collective issues. Political participation, civic engagement, social participation, community participation, active citizenship, and many others, have been used at times synonymously and at times distinctly to denote various ways of getting involved in societal or collective issues In this sense, there is some ambiguity over how much studies of differently defined forms of participation overlap and what degree of specificity carries each term. The field of study has, been characterized by lack of clarity on what constitutes youth participation in the public sphere and how it should be approached

Methods

Results

Conclusion