Premium
Adolescent Civic and Political Engagement: Associations Between Domain‐Specific Judgments and Behavior
Author(s) -
Metzger Aaron,
Smetana Judith G.
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.103
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1467-8624
pISSN - 0009-3920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01270.x
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , politics , civic engagement , developmental psychology , voting behavior , middle class , voting , political science , law
Judgments and justifications for different forms of civic involvement and their associations with organized and civic behavior were examined in 312 middle‐class primarily White adolescents ( M = 17.01 years). Adolescents applied moral, conventional, and personal criteria to distinguish involvement in community service, standard political, social movement, and social gathering activities. Males judged standard political involvement to be more obligatory and important than did females, who judged community service to be more obligatory and important than did males. For each form of civic involvement, greater involvement was associated with more positive judgments and fewer personal justifications. Structural equation modeling indicated that adolescents’ judgments about specific types of civic involvement were associated with similar forms of civic behaviors.