Domain-specific judgments of civic and political engagement in late adolescence : associations with adolescent activity involvement

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, 2007.Research in adolescent development has become increasingly interested in adolescent civic involvement, especially as involvement is hypothesized to lead to later adult civic engagement. However, research has not addressed adolescents’ civic beliefs. Therefore, the present study had two goals. The first goal was to employ the framework of social domain theory to assess adolescents’ judgments and justifications for different forms of civic involvement. The second goal was to examine the relationship between adolescents’ civic beliefs and the types of civic and organized activities in which adolescents were involved. These aims were investigated in a cross-sectional study of 312 late adolescents (10th, 11th, and 12th graders; mean age = 17.01 years, SD = .86) from a middle-class suburban high school. Though a majority of the participants were White, a substantial proportion were either African American or Asian American, which was consistent with the demography of the high school. Participants’ civic conceptualizations were assessed through multiple questionnaire reports including adolescents’ obligation ratings, rankings, and justifications. Adolescents were asked to respond to the following types of civic involvement: community service, standard political involvement, social movement involvement, and social gathering involvement. As hypothesized, adolescents’ distinguished among types of civic involvement in their ratings, rankings, and justifications stemming from the domain-specific characteristics of different types of civic involvement. Interestingly, males and females were found to differ slightly in their prioritization of two types of involvement, with boys prioritizing standard political involvement more than girls, who, in turn, prioritized community service more than did boys. Adolescents’ current civic and organized activity was assessed using a measure that included a wide array of community service, political, and extracurricular activities. The relative amount of time adolescents’ spent in each activity also was examined. As expected, adolescent girls and adolescents from more educated households were more involved in activities than were boys and adolescents from less educated families. Contrary to hypotheses, however, older adolescents were less involved than were younger adolescents. Analyses examining the association between adolescents’ civic ratings and justifications and their activity involvement showed that with increased involvement, adolescents viewed all forms of civic involvement as more obligatory and more important. They also rated individuals who were more civically involved as more worthy of respect. More involved adolescents also used fewer personal justifications for each of type of civic involvement. However, regression analyses indicated that compared to other forms of involvement, adolescents especially prioritized civic activities in which they were themselves involved. Finally, exploratory cluster analyses examined the formation of adolescent activity involvement profiles. Analyses yielded six unique profiles of involvement, though contrary to hypotheses, adolescent work seemed to distinguish profiles better than did some types of organized activity involvement. However, the activity profiles did not uniquely predict adolescent civic conceptualizations. This study extends moral development research on adolescents’ political conceptualizations to include adolescents’ beliefs concerning civic involvement. This study also contributes to the civic involvement literature by showing that adolescents have differentiated conceptualizations of various forms of civic involvement. In addition, this study demonstrates the utility of including adolescent beliefs in future civic research, as adolescents’ civic beliefs were linked to their civic behavior