One of the traditional aims of higher education is to prepare informed citizens who are civically engaged. Although many voters are underinformed, there are multiple social benefits to having an informed electorate. Therefore, colleges should aspire to not only increase student voter turnout but to prepare informed voters. In this article, I use…

Educational attainment measured by years of education has been widely reported as leading to higher levels of political participation. The theory is that education plays an important role in a person's civic skills and cognitive capacity that helps them understand and connect with the world of politics and be able to defend their interests (Nie et…

The focus of this paper is whether type of Australian school attended makes a difference in student engagement in political and civic culture. Recently private schools have been said to "undermine cohesion" in Australian society. Similarly, it was argued over two decade ago that Australian private schools have skimmed the elite students…

Although previous research consistently finds a strong relationship between parent and child voting, the role of parent encouragement, or verbal instruction, remains less clear. In addition, few studies in this area have attempted to determine the causal mechanisms which drive this association. This study models a potential outcomes approach to…

Focusing on youth attitudes during a time of political upheaval in Catalonia, we study 1,438 high school students, aged 15 to 16, nested within 30 high schools. Using multilevel analyses, we examine their perceptions of the importance of voting across different election types (independence referendum, local, subnational, national, supernational)…

This study contributes new evidence on the factors associated with undergraduate study abroad participation and post-college civic engagement, with particular attention on the moderating influence of first-generation college student status. Drawing on Education Longitudinal Study 2002-2012 data, this study analyzes how students' ascribed…

Background/Context: Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSIs), or those postsecondary institutions that meet the 25% Latina/o enrollment requirement to become federally designated as HSIs, are burgeoning in the United States. Similarly, emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions (eHSIs), or those postsecondary institutions that enroll between 15% and 24%…

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating…

This article performs exploratory research using a mixed-methods approach (structural equation modelling and a thematic analysis of interview data) to analyse the ways in which socioeconomic disparities in voting patterns are reproduced through inequalities in education in different national contexts, and the role of self-efficacy in this process.…

Using data from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program from University of California Los Angeles ("n" = 523), this study investigates curricular and co-curricular experiences that influence the odds of volunteering for Latina/o students who attend private institutions. Results show that Latinas/os who rated themselves highly on…

It is possible that human capital produces positive externalities to the society indirectly, through non-market channels such as health or crime. Another such channel could be the effect of education on the functioning of democratic decision-making. Measures of the functioning of democracy are bound to be controversial, but one such measure--voter…

The influences of high school community service participation, extracurricular involvement, and civic knowledge on voting and volunteering in early adulthood were examined using the National Educational Longitudinal Study. The major finding in this study is that both voluntary and school-required community service in high school were strong…

The landmark Civic Mission of Schools report of 2003 laid out an argument for the role of schools in promoting youth civic engagement and presented a range of promising ideas and practices to accomplish that. In this study we describe the civic engagement outcomes that Jefferson County Public Schools (JCPS) in Louisville, KY, has chosen to promote…

Examined voting behavior among 370 low-income older African Americans by assessing impact of various predictors on electoral participation in 7 elections. Elders who were active in community, with strong sense of citizen duty, who identified as strong Democrats, and with higher levels of education were more likely to vote. (Author/NB)

A study examined data from 1,828 adults in 17 cities in the United States to test a model of how community integration (sense of community) and use of media affected voting and other political participation. The portion of the model dealing with mass media included the new concept "quasi-mass media," which involves more personalized…