Levels of Political Awareness among Students at Indiana Wesleyan University

With the increasing turmoil in the international and domestic political realm, it is vital for college students, who are the next generation of leaders, to remain engaged with and attentive to politics. This research project attempts to gauge the approximate level of political awareness of residential, undergraduate students at Indiana Wesleyan University, a Midwestern Christian liberal arts university, in order to encourage activities that promote high level of political awareness. Political awareness is defined as the recognition of the functions of the US government, government actions (policies, laws, etc), and the current events which motivate those actions. To test political awareness, randomly selected participants took a survey consisting of self-assessment questions and objective knowledge-based questions to determine perceived and actual levels of political awareness. After collecting the data, the project analyzed overall levels of political awareness as well as compared levels of political awareness by gender, major, and year in school. Tentative results suggest that IWU students possess basic levels of political awareness