Original articleFrom Adolescent Connections to Social Capital: Predictors of Civic Engagement in Young Adulthood
Section snippets
Study design and population
Data for this study are from Waves 1 (1995) and 3 (2001–2002) of the in-home interviews from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Add Health is a probability, nationally representative, longitudinal study examining the causes and contexts of health-related behaviors of adolescents and their outcomes in young adulthood in the United States. The details of research and sampling design are described extensively elsewhere [21], [22].
The sample for the current study is
Results
Demographic characteristics for the sample assessed at Wave 1 are presented in Table 3. The mean age of youth at Wave 1 was 15.4 years (SD = 1.79).
Youth endorsed moderate-to-high connection in multiple contexts (Table 3). On average, youth shared five activities with parents in the previous month. Independent variable correlations ranged from .14–.46 (Table 4).
Young adults participated in a variety of civic activities in the previous year (Table 3). Overall, more than 90% of young adults
Discussion
This study provides longitudinal evidence for the importance of connection in family and community contexts during adolescence for the facilitation of civic engagement in young adulthood. We investigated predictors of multiple aspects of civic engagement. Civic engagement is defined beyond reported thoughts about civic responsibility and endorsement of civic engagement efficacy to evaluate predictors of actual behavior. It differs from previous studies about parent–youth interaction and the
Acknowledgments
This research uses data from Add Health, a program project designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris, and funded by a grant P01-HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 17 other agencies. Special acknowledgment is due Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Persons interested in obtaining data files from Add Health should contact Add
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