Home and School Environmental Influences on Adolescents' Sociopolitical Group Participation: Implications for Increasing Youth Involvement

Background/Purpose: Sociopolitical groups (e.g., community service and service-learning programs) can serve a number of functions in youth development depending on their objectives and the way in which they are implemented. For instance, it has been found that service-learning leads to adolescents changing their orientation towards their communities, especially regarding how they view poverty. It has also been related to the pursuit of careers in helping professions, increased political involvement, and commitments to community service that endure well into adulthood.

Many schools have adapted their existing curricula to include mandatory community service or service-learning participation. This requirement is often met through sociopolitical group involvement.

The purpose of this study is to add to the discourse around civic education that would lead to more high school students gaining access to and particpating in sociopolitical groups. To accomplish this, the relationship between sociopolitical group participation and aspects of students' school and home environments are explored.

Methods: Data and samples: The data for this study are taken from The Commission on Youth Voting and Civic Knowledge Youth Post Election Survey 2012 dataset. Four thousand, four hundred and eighty-three participants aged 18 to 24 were surveyed about their political participation and their educational experiences.

Measures: Participants' gender, race/ethnicity, and high school racial composition were self-reported. Scales were created to assess participants' parental SES, family socialization, high school democratic climate, and high school civics education quality. The dependent variables that were observed were participants' sociopolitical group participation in school, out of school, and both in and out of school.

Data Analyses: Binary and ordinal logistic regression modeling was used to analyze the data depending on whether the dependent variable was dichotomous or ordinal.

Results: Parental SES, race, gender, and high school civics education quality were found to be statistically significant predictors of joining a sociopolitical group in high school.

Civics education quality in high school was found to be marginally influential in increasing the likelihood of joining a sociopolitical group outside of high school.

Race was found to be a statistically significant predictor of having joined one or both types of sociopolitical groups after accounting for all other independent variables. Receiving a better quality high school civic education was also influential in raising the likelihood of respondents participating in some type of sociopolitical group as opposed to joining no groups or only one type of group.

Parental SES and high school civics education quality play some role in increasing the likelihood of students having participated in both types of sociopolitical groups as opposed to one type of group or no groups.

Conclusions and Implications: The results indicate that several factors in the home and school environments of the participants were related to an increased probability of joining a social or political group at school, away from school, or both. These findings suggest that the messages crafted to encourage youth participation in sociopolitical groups should account for the demographic (i.e., racial, gender, and cultural) and experiential (i.e., civics education quality) differences present within the target population.