Predictors of Civic Involvement in Young Adulthood

Background and Purpose: Civic involvement – the investment residents make to their community – is an activity that can lead to positive outcomes in the socio-economic and psychological well-beingof people of all ages.Civic involvement specifically supports young adults in developing a strong and healthy view of self, feelings of social responsibility, and connectedness to their community. However, literature overwhelmingly reports on data from White non-Hispanic college involved young adults from high income families, limiting access to information on young adult populations with diverse levels of educational attainment, racial backgrounds, and socio-economic status.This paper investigated if level of education,socio-economic status,race, and neighborhood type are predictors of civic involvement levels in a diverse sample of young adults aged 18-29.

Methods:This paper employs a cross-sectional design, reviewing year three data from Gallup International Inc. Individuals aged 18 and older were recruited through random digit dialing. When a household from an identified area was reached, one adult within the household was randomly selected for the study.Datum were collected through telephone calls that lasted approximately 15 minutes. The 2010 data was collected from May 2010 through August 2010. The final sample for this study consisted of 1,058 young adults aged 18-29. To address the research question, a logistic regression using the logit command in StataIC version 15.1 was performed. More specifically, we modeled the dichotomous outcome indicating high civic involvement as a function of level of education, neighborhood type, socio-economic status, and race. The mean age was 22 years old (SD= 3.6). Race was a categorical variable coded from 1-5. Sixty-five percent of the sample were white. Education was a categorical variable coded 0-2, with 67% of the sample having completed high school. Socio-economic status was coded 0-1 – poor or not poor – and constructed by income and family size following poverty guidelines at 138% to make the distinction.

Results:Overall results of the logistic regression indicated that the specified model fit the data better than the null model (X²(4) = 32.43, p < .000). Potential multi-collinearity was examined among the independent variables and the variance inflation factors were all well within recommended levels (1.02-1.03). Model parameters indicated that for every one-unit increase in education, there was a .66 increase in the log odds of engaging in high civic involvement (se = .12, p < .000, OR = 1.93), holding socio-economic status, neighborhood, and race constant.

Conclusions and Implications: This paper found that young adults with higher education have an increased likelihood of high civic involvement. This can potentially be explained by exposure to opportunities that those who have attended college may have access to. Consistent with existing research, neighborhood type, socio-economic status, and race were not predictors of civic involvement. This study offers implications for future interventions aiming to increase access to civic involvement activities for young adults with lower educational attainment so that they too have opportunities to develop a healthy view of self, increased social responsibility, and connectedness to their community through civic involvement.