Hannah Aylene Haley: Millennials' civic tendencies: An examination of the impact of civic education on millennials' political knowledge and political participation. This dissertation examines the impact that citizenship education has on the political participation and political knowledge level of Millennials. By focusing on citizenship education as an influential force, this dissertation will inform readers about the impact that citizenship education has on millennials' political participation and political knowledge.
Will millennials with higher levels of civic education have higher levels of political knowledge? Before concluding, I will discuss the implications of my findings on the influence of citizenship education on millennials' political participation and political knowledge. Furthermore, it is important to understand the impact of citizenship education on millennials' political participation and knowledge.
Civic education is a key component to the process of political socialization if the following is true. This thesis examines the effect of civic education on Millennials' political participation and political knowledge. There appears to be a relationship present between these agents teaching civic education to Millennials and Millennials' levels of political participation and knowledge.
Each of my hypotheses addressed a specific aspect of civic education that is relevant to millennial politics. I believed this would be useful because I wanted to discover the impact of civic education on the political knowledge and political participation of millennials. The table above shows the correlation between exposure to high school civics and another measure of political participation.
High School Civics Course
While the results vary based on the type of political participation outside the classroom, some correlations are present. For example, 56 percent of respondents who had four years of social studies in high school also participated in mock trial, compared to only 35.29 percent of. There is also a positive correlation between respondents who had four years of civic education and participated in Model United Nations and Youth in Government.
Interestingly, for participation in student self-governance, regardless of the number of years, each category5 still had more than 50 percent of respondents participating in student self-governance. This suggests that even minimal high school civic education can influence future participation in various political activities. 5 The category here refers to the extent of civic education in the school based on the following time frames: less than one year, one year, two years, three years, 4 years, or other.
I also wanted to understand the role that exposure to civics in the high school classroom had on millennials' political knowledge. The political knowledge dependent variable for this figure was knowledge of the 26th Amendment. Specifically, there is a 26.97% difference in knowledge of the 26th Amendment when comparing respondents who have had high school civics education to respondents who have not had any form of high school civics education.
However, it is important to note that out of a total of fourteen respondents who indicated that they had not followed a form of government, only three of these respondents knew the 26th Amendment correctly. This figure was arrived at using a cross-tabulation between high school civics and knowledge of the 26th Amendment. The figure above only shows the response rates between high school social studies and correct knowledge of this amendment.
I wanted to further explore the impact exposure to social studies courses had on Millennials' political knowledge. To do this, I looked at knowledge of the 26th Amendment based on years of high school civics. This figure was created in the same way as Figure 2 was, meaning that only the responses for the "26th Amendment" response option were included.
Number of Years of Civics Education
Specifically, 56.79 percent of Millennials who had a year of social studies education correctly chose the 26th Amendment. However, this figure dropped to 38.96 percent when looking at respondents who had two years of social studies education. It may also be because there is an aspect of knowing the 26th Amendment that may not always carry over from year to year.
So while this result may be inconclusive, the underlying theory that increased exposure to civic education increases political knowledge is still valid when looking at respondents with less than one year of high school civics education and respondents with more than one year of high school education. In the same way, this is the case when looking at respondents with less than one year of upper secondary education and respondents with four years of upper secondary education. The second hypothesis looked at the effect of parents and teachers on Millennials' levels of political participation and political knowledge.
Both actors play an important role in the development of political participation and political knowledge among millennials. Specifically, Part A argued that millennials who were raised in strongly political homes are much more likely to participate politically and have much higher levels of political knowledge. These measures should help better understand the role of family political involvement in millennials' political knowledge.
These four measures come together to form the overall impact on the family, which means “highly political houses.” The political knowledge. Of respondents who correctly identified the 26th Amendment, 38.6 percent also believed that their parents had “a lot.” There is a 9 percent difference between respondents who knew the 26th Amendment correctly and who also checked “a lot.”
Further, as parental encouragement of political participation decreases, so do the number of respondents who correctly identify the 26th Amendment. Specifically, this figure shows the relationship between parents who took their children to vote or campaign with them and millennials' knowledge of the 26th Amendment. Similar to my previous findings regarding parental encouragement, only one category had multiple respondents who correctly identified the 26th Amendment.
Amendment
This shows that taking Millennials to vote and/or campaign is critical to Millennials' development of political knowledge. By taking these four measures, I was able to determine if there were any stronger associations between all four of these family and parenting policy measures and Millennials' political knowledge. The results show that there is a correlation between the sum of all family and parenting measures and Millennials' levels of political knowledge.
While measures such as parental encouragement of political activity and parents taking children to vote or campaign increase the knowledge level of Millennials, when all four of these different measures are added together, the results are even stronger. To understand the impact of “highly political homes” on Millennials' political participation, I further explored the survey findings. The effect of "highly political homes" included parental encouragement of political participation and parental influence on respondents' political participation.
The "a lot" category represents the greatest amount of parental encouragement, and the "not much" category represents the least amount of parental encouragement. The most notable finding from this table is the effect of parents encouraging Millennials to be politically active and Millennials volunteering for a political cause. 7 The measure of political participation used here is the same question used in the results section for H1.
What is interesting is the high level of online and social media political activity among all respondents across all three levels of parental encouragement. For example, over 60 percent of respondents said they have shared a link to a political story or opinion in the past year, regardless of how much parental encouragement they had received. But sharing a political connection and having a face-to-face political discussion are the only forms of political participation that respondents who said their parents did very little to encourage political participation actually had the highest percentage of activity.
Across all other forms of participation, the highest percentage of activity came from participants who received a lot of encouragement from their parents. One particularly interesting free response expresses the impact the home environment has on millennials' political behavior. This shows, from the perspective of an individual respondent, attitudes that agree that the home and family are extremely influential when it comes to the development of political and political attitudes.
26th Amendment
Why civic education is vital to understanding the youngest voting cohort in the American electorate, the Millennials. At the center of political socialization and civic education is teaching and aspects of political and civic life. This research presents findings related to two agents of political socialization and how these agents teach civic education.
From there, this thesis sought to understand the impact of civic education on Millennials' political knowledge and political participation. This dissertation examined what the function of civic education is to influence Millennials' political participation and knowledge. What remains is that there is an incredibly relevant function of civic education in America.
The input of civic education should result in the result of an informed, prepared and engaged citizenry. Policymakers and government officials should look at the impact of civic education assessment and testing on political knowledge. A country-by-country project would help to understand the impact of civic education on political knowledge and political participation.
Furthermore, political scientists who focus on political socialization should look at why civic education is so important to socialization. Based on the research presented, the teaching of civic education and the process of political socialization appear to be related. This thesis aimed to understand the knowledge and participation of a generation as a result of civic education.
And there is a link between exposure to citizenship education in high school and political participation and political knowledge. Therefore, citizenship education is critical to the well-being of this country and the republic. Therefore, it is important to study the levels of political knowledge and political participation, as these are influenced by citizenship education.
This thesis explored the impact of civic education on millennials, as it is important to understand its impact on the political participation and politics of this new generation. I am currently working on my thesis and conducting a research study on civic education and political participation.
