The impact of political social motivation, trust in government, external political efficacy, internal political efficacy and personal motivation on political engagement behavior among young adult college students

Aim: This study assesses the impact of political social motivation, trust in government, political efficacy, and personal motivation on political engagement behavior among young adult college students. Study Design: Quasi-experimental One-shot Case Study Design. Place and duration of study: Fayetteville State University; January 2014 to May 2014. Methodology: Survey data of indicators of the five latent constructs was collected from college students. Exploratory principal component factor analysis and Cronbach’s alpha test were performed to identify the factorial structure of the each of the political engagement questionnaire. Structural equation modeling analysis was performed to estimate the overall model fit indices and the magnitude of effects of political social motivation, trust in government, political efficacy, and personal motivation on political engagement behavior among the young adult college students. Results: The analysis found that internal political efficacy had a large significant negative impact of political engagement behavior. External political efficacy had a large significant positive influence on political engagement behavior. Trust in government had a small positive insignificant effect on political engagement behavior. Political social motivation and personal motivation had no meaningful impact on political engagement behavior of the young adult college students. Conclusion: Collectively, these findings suggest that to sustain American democracy, the focus may well be on promoting internal and external political efficacy, and to a less extent trust in government, not on political motivation among young adult college students