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Dietlind Stolle McGill University, Montreal, Canada [email protected] Marc Hooghe Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium [email protected] Preparing for the Learning School of Democracy The Effects of Youth and Adolescent Involvement on Value Patterns and Participation in Adult Life ECPR Joint Sessions 2002 Turin, 22-27 March 2002 1. Introduction The recent literature on social capital has demonstrated successfully that networks of civic engagement, generalized trust and norms of reciprocity within a society have beneficial effects on the functioning of political institutions, individual well-being and even economic growth. However, we know less about how these kinds of attitudes and behaviours might be generated. While institution-centred accounts focus on the role of government institutions and policy effects (Braithwaite and Levi 1998; Skocpol 1999; Rothstein & Stolle forthcoming), society-centred approaches see frequent social interaction as a prerequisite for the creation of generalized trust and reciprocity (Putnam 2000). The logic of society-centred approaches implies that associations fulfil a socialization function: because of their interaction in voluntary associations and related experiences of co-operation, members are socialised into a more democratic and more trusting value pattern. Yet, the empirical research does not fully support this assumption. Although people who are members of associations are usually more trusting and tolerant, so far no one has convincingly demonstrated that the social participation experience has an independent effect on civic attitudes. Proving causality ideally requires longitudinal research, which would allow us to follow the development of value patterns of individuals over time. When we look at the literature on political socialization, however, this lack of empirical confirmation becomes understandable. This kind of research demonstrates that socialization effects tend to be more limited in scope during one’s adult life and it suggests that the adherence to core values and identities is relatively stable during the life cycle (Uslaner 2002). Of course changes in attitudes do occur during adulthood (Sigel 1989a), partly as a result of job experiences (Kohn & Schooler 1982) and family (Lesthaeghe & Moors 2001) or social experiences, but also as a result of societal changes, but in general these changes do not interfere with the basic pattern, established early in the life cycle. In sum, the most powerful socialization experiences occur in the early, formative phases of the life cycle, for example in the context of family experiences as well as civic education and community involvement projects for young people. In other words, if we want to detect the occurrence of socialization effects on democratic and trusting attitudes and behaviours as social capital research suggests, the more promising strategy would be to focus on young people, and not on adults. A growing body of research indeed suggests that political attitudes and behaviours are shaped early in life, e.g., through socialization within families, schools, peer groups, community projects but also youth associations (Flanagan & Sherrod 1998; Hahn 1998; 1 Niemi & Junn 1998; Oswald & Schmid 1998; Yates & Youniss 1999; Galston 2001; Torney-Purta et.al. 2001). Working within the ‘political generations’-tradition of Karl Mannheim, some authors also stress the importance of generation defining events during adolescence or early adulthood. Most of this literature is confined to the field of family and education studies, and the insights offered by this line of research are rarely integrated into the newly emerging area of social capital research or into political participation research. Longitudinal studies like the Niemi/Jennings socialization research, however, suggest that participation at a young age does have lasting effects on subsequent political attitudes and behaviours (Jennings & Niemi 1981). Some authors in this line of research argue that youth participation strengthens a feeling of political and social efficacy, which is conducive for adult participation. Other authors state that the networks, which are formed by youth participation, especially at the local level, can later be used for various mobilization efforts. Although the causal link needs further specification, it is clear that we cannot develop a full understanding of adult participation without taking into account the effects of youth participation and socialization. The study of adolescents in this context is highly interesting for other reasons too. First, in recent years several studies have shown that especially among young people’s political interest and civic participation has been declining dramatically (Rahn & Transue 1995). Putnam’s findings on falling membership in voluntary associations, declining volunteerism, political apathy, and rising political and social distrust point to the fact that generational change might be behind these developments, as a ‘civic generation’ is gradually being replaced by younger age cohorts, less interested in public affairs (Putnam 2000). Even though the factors behind generational change are not directly related to the life cycle, the concern about the “less-participant young generation” certainly urges us to better understand important youth socialization influences that shape civic attitudes and behaviours. In this paper, we develop the idea of integrating the insights of studies on youth socialization into the field of social capital research. Yet previous socialization studies need to be modified. They focused mainly on the importance of civic education and utilised a fairly simplistic top-down approach to socialization. Our argument is that adolescent social interaction and social participation might be more influential learning schools for democracy. For society-centred social capital approaches this implies that it is time to shift the focus from the importance attributed to adult participation to the scrutiny of social interaction patterns and experiences during one’s adolescence. We explore the empirical links between youth and adult participation, as well as between youth participation and civic values and attitudes, distinguishing between the structural (mobilization networks) and 2 attitudinal causal mechanisms. In this effort, we rely both on an overview of the existing literature as well as on a secondary analysis of both North American and European research. Even though we perform important tests of our hypotheses, it will become clear that our data sources to date cannot fully disentangle the effects of youth experiences on adult civic attitudes and values. We therefore propose new research projects that can be more successful in solving this puzzle. 2. Social Interaction as a Source of Social Capital Society-centred approaches to the study of social capital rely predominantly on the importance of social interactions and voluntary associations in the manner originally suggested by Tocqueville. Voluntary associations and other forms of social interactions are seen as creators of social capital because of their socialization effects on democratic and cooperative values and norms: associations function as “learning schools for democracy.”1 For example, the settlement houses were often referred to as training grounds for the participants to shape and influence their social values and further political demands (Putnam 2000:394ff.). Similarly horizontal voluntary associations are thought to have shaped the cooperative spirit of Northern Italians. The claim is that in areas with stronger, dense, horizontal, and more cross-cutting networks, there is a spill-over from the membership in organizations to the development of cooperative values and norms that citizens develop. In areas where networks with such characteristics do not develop, there are fewer opportunities to learn civic virtues and democratic attitudes, resulting in a lack of trust. At the micro-level, this entails the relationship between an individual’s membership in associations and networks (structural aspects of social capital), and an individual’s values and attitudes (cultural aspects of social capital). So far the social capital school has mainly used membership in voluntary associations or other types of networks as the indicator of social capital, assuming that such groups and associations function as a school of democracy, where co-operative values and trust are easily socialised.2 These insights, however, are confronted with some important problems. First of all, empirical research routinely finds a significant relation between membership in voluntary associations and democratic value patterns, but this relation generally is not as strong as is 1 However, associations might also have external effects, as they link citizens to the political process (see Toqueville (1835) and Putnam (1993)). 3 expected in part of the theoretical literature. Second, since most research relies on crosssectional survey material, the direction of causality cannot be established: the observed relation might as well be the result of self-selection. Third and related, there is no microtheory on the question how participation in voluntary associations or other social interactions would have these strong effects, compared to other interaction contexts. Furthermore, and most importantly in the context of our paper, the thesis that interaction within voluntary associations exerts a strong socialization effect runs counter to some of the basic findings of the research on political socialization. Research on the consequences of social participation and associational membership has indicated a general relationship with civic traits of the participants or members. Most empirical studies on the effect of voluntary associations show that members of organizations and associations exhibit more democratic and civic attitudes as well as more active forms of political participation than non-members. Almond and Verba (1963) already found that members of associations are more politically active, more informed about politics, more sanguine about their ability to affect political life, and more supportive of democratic norms (Billiet and Cambré, 1999; Olsen, 1972; Verba and Nie, 1972). Others have noticed that the number and type of associations to which people belong, and the extent of their activity within the organization, are related to political activity and involvement (Rogers, Bultena and Barb, 1975). In later research, Verba and his colleagues found that members of voluntary associations learn self-respect, group identity, and public skills (Verba, Schlozman and Brady, 1995; see also Dekker, Koopmans and van den Broek, 1997; Moyser and Parry, 1997). Similarly, Clemens shows how multiple memberships in women’s organizations and additional training at the turn of the twentieth century fostered the transfer of civic and organizational skills and interpersonal ties. This web of formal and informal organizations provided the backdrop of the women’s suffrage movement (Clemens 1999). To these findings, the social capital school adds the insight that membership in associations should also facilitate the learning of co-operative attitudes and behaviour, including reciprocity. In particular, membership in voluntary associations should increase face-to-face interactions between people and create a setting for the development of trust. This in-group trust can be utilized to achieve group purposes more efficiently and more easily. Furthermore, via mechanisms that are not yet clearly understood, the development of interpersonal trust and the co-operative experiences between members tends to be generalized to the society as a whole (Boix and Posner, 1996). In this way, the operation of voluntary 2 Another reason for this approach has been, of course, that indicators of memberships in associations as opposed to other types of social interactions or attitudinal data have been readily available. 4 groups and associations contributes to the building of a society in which co-operation between all people for all sorts of purposes — not just within the groups themselves — is facilitated. The problem with the research to date is that even though individuals who join groups and who interact with others regularly show attitudinal and behavioural differences compared to non-joiners, the possibility exists that people self-select into associations and groups, depending on their original levels of generalized trust and reciprocity. This is a classic problem of endogeneity. People who trust more might be more easily drawn to membership in associations, whereas people who trust less might not join in the first place. Ideally one would track association members over time in order to filter out the separate influence of group membership on trust, controlling for self-selection effects. However, such longitudinal data are rarely available, and are time-consuming and costly to collect. Another strategy is to compare those who are more active with those who are less engaged in associational life. In order to gain better insights into the relationship between self-selection and membership effects, Stolle collected a data set sampling non-members and members in various associations in three countries — Germany, Sweden, and the United States — and carrying out two comparisons, namely between non-members and members, and between those who had just joined and those who participated for longer periods. The finding is that membership does indeed influence trust toward the other group members and personal engagement within the group, but with regard to generalized trust, the self-selection effects were more pronounced than the membership effects (Stolle, 2001a). This essentially suggests that people with higher levels of trust indeed self-select into associations. Other research confirms that associational membership and the face-to-face interactions do not necessarily contribute to the development of civic attitudes and values (Claiborn and Martin 2000; Mayer, forthcoming; Uslaner 2002; Wollebæk and Selle forthcoming). Similar or mixed results emerge on the effects of associations at the macro level (Herreros and Morales 2000; Stolle, forthcoming; van der Meer forthcoming). How can we explain these puzzling findings? One interesting causal mechanism is suggested by Hooghe (forthcoming). He argues that membership in associations has incremental and reinforcing effects. In his theoretical account, socialization effects in associations can occur when the members of an association converge in a process of value polarisation. In what might be called a cycle of “selection and adaptation”, members self-select into these kinds of organizations, but subsequently they are being influenced by the values upheld by their fellow-members. This practically implies that socialization effects are more prevalent in homogeneous settings where value patterns 5 converge more easily, and that they are less pronounced than we sometimes think they are. So, no wonder some of the research does not find any significant effects, if membership can only under certain conditions lead to the strengthening of existing values. In fact, the logic of the argument implies that value patterns are formed much before the actual participation experience, whereas the membership mainly contributes to the strengthening of existing values. The lack of solid empirical evidence for the ‘learning school’ of voluntary associations might be related to the fact that for adults, membership in organizations and other regular social contacts are relatively short-lived and happen at a stage in life when important aspects of the socialization process have already been completed. Given the fact that for most adults, the participation in voluntary associations takes but a limited amount of their time, it seems unlikely that the interaction within these associations would have such a strong effect on their attitudes (Newton 1997). The results of a Belgian survey show that, on average, people spend some 2h15min a week in voluntary associations, and there is no apparent reason why this mere two hours would have such a strong influence, taking into consideration that family life, work hours, informal social life, watching television or school are much more important in the time budget of most citizens (Hooghe 2001). In retrospect, it indeed seems unlikely that such strong socialization effects of non-vital events (like the membership of an association) would be found among adults. In fact within the reference frame of political socialization studies, we would expect that secondary socialization experiences, i.e. socialization occurring later in the life cycle, will have a less lasting impact, as they happen in a later phase of life and most of these experiences are rather short-lived and not necessarily influential to substantially change or shape people’s attitudes and behaviours. In review of socialization studies, it might be more plausible that primary socialization experiences, i.e. those experiences in one’s childhood and adolescence, are more formative. Although Sigel stresses the importance of experiences in later life, she too acknowledges: “much of the foundation for political life – affect, cognition, and participation – is in place as the young person reaches adulthood” (Sigel 1989b, ix). Maybe voluntary associations do function as learning schools, but in any case it makes sense to look at what is happening before people enter them, to study how young people pick up participatory habits and how they acquire their basic outlook toward society at a relatively early age. Or as Paul Whiteley (1999, 41-42) puts it: “individual values (…) which can only be explained effectively by socialization processes within the family and in early adulthood experiences, play a more important role in creating social capital than does face-to-face interaction within organizations”. 6 We therefore suggest that we open up the social capital agenda to the insights of socialization research. In other words, instead of looking at potentially minor influences in one’s adult life on civic attitudes and behaviours, we should turn to adolescents because their social experiences in associational life and similar social contacts might be more influential. This view suggests that core values of social capital, such as norms of reciprocity and generalized trust, can be considered as traits that are acquired early in life (Piaget 1932; Kohlberg 1981), and that remain rather stable throughout one’s lifetime (see more on this below). This would be specially the case for reciprocity, not only a key element of social capital, but also one of the central elements of Piaget’s observations on the moral development of children. According to the classic Piaget studies, the sense of reciprocity is well established in most children by the age of twelve. By studying respondents at an earlier age, than social capital studies have done so far, we effectively take up the suggestion by Niemi and Junn (1998, 157): “If we want to understand what adult citizens know and do not know about political life, and how they got that way, the late adolescent years and schools are good places to begin”. However, what are the messages of youth socialization studies so far? 3. Political socialization—What do we know? 3.1. The Early Literature Focusing on the socialization effects of experiences early in the life cycle implies that we return to the field of political socialization, a line of research, which has largely been abandoned in the past two decades. While in the 1960s and 1970s various studies on this topic were published, by the time Renshon (1977) brought out his Handbook of Political Socialization, the field had fallen out of grace as an established line of research. The assumptions of the early literature on political socialization have indeed become unacceptable for current standards. Following the lead of authors like Hyman (1959), who coined the expression, as well as Easton and Dennis (1969), political socialization was seen as a mechanism to ensure that younger age cohorts adopted and internalised the political orientations of older generations. The concern was mostly about political and democratic stability, as is understandable from the perspective of the post-war years. In this sense, political socialization functioned as a source of diffuse support for the political system. Indeed, most of the authors in this line of research considered “socialization as a stabilizing social mechanism” (Schwartz & Schwartz 1975, 4). 7 This early socialization school understood the process as a top-down, one-way street: children and adolescents received clues from their parents and from schools, and they simply accepted and adopted these standards and orientations: “In general, the picture that tends to emerge from this research is that of a gradual, continuous process of incremental change through childhood and adolescence during which the new generation acquires the norms prevailing within the adult population” (Schwartz & Schwartz 1975, 5). A typical (although admittedly somewhat far-fetched) example of this approach would be the study Roig and Billon-Grand (1968) conducted in France in 1963 among 413 school-children between 10 and 14 years of age. Typical questions of their survey included the degree of respect for the President, the adherence to patriotic feelings and anti-communism, and knowledge about the French political institutions. The researchers noted that 89 per cent of all pupils correctly identified “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité” as the official motto of the French Republic, while they also discovered encouraging signs of patriotism among these young citizens: 38 per cent of all pupils agreed that traitors of the country should be executed, although the researchers were worried a bit about the lack of patriotic firmness among the girls: only 19 per cent of them favoured the death penalty for traitors, compared to 48 per cent of the boys (Roig & Billon-Grand 1968, 70). These examples strike us a hopelessly outdated, and now it would probably be considered unethical to even propose these kinds of answers to ten yearolds, but the interesting finding is nevertheless that even ten year-olds do come up with consistent answers to these kinds of questions. This would imply that children, at this age, already have at least some notion of political ideas and concepts, and therefore it would make sense to study them, as source and effect. 3.2. The Importance of Early Life Events Interestingly, research on value change and social capital research itself also suggest that the phase of adolescence is an important one to study. The argument here is that major value shifts in Western societies are dependent on a mechanism of generational replacement. Although individual attitudes remain relatively stable throughout the life cycle, at a societal level, fundamental changes occur as new generations succeed older cohorts with different value patterns (Inglehart 1997, 51-66). The decline of civic engagement in the United States, too, has been described as the result of a process of generational replacement: the ‘long civic generation’, which was raised during the hardship of World War II and subsequent reconstruction, consistently shows higher participation levels than younger age cohorts, raised during the affluent 1960s or later decades (Putnam 2000, 247-276). Both in the work 8 of Inglehart as in the recent work of Putnam it is assumed that early life experiences have a strong and enduring impact on the development of social attitudes, and that these attitudes are relatively stable during the remainder of one’s life cycle. For example, being raised in economically difficult circumstances is shown to be associated with a more materialistic outlook, no matter whether life conditions have changed dramatically later on or not. In Putnam’s view, the experience of external threat in one’s adolescence might have contributed to the development of feelings of unity that mobilise civic orientations and behaviours, both of which remain stable throughout one’s life as well.3 Relying on a mechanism of general replacement indeed only makes sense, if we assume that behavioural and attitudinal patterns tend to be relatively stable during one’s lifecycles. If not, there would not be any reason to describe an age cohort as a generation, as we would be unable to identify distinct and long-lasting value influences on a group (generation). Although Putnam does not explicitly use the concept of political generations, his description of a long civic generation closely resembles Mannheim’s view. Mannheim states that political generations are distinct from one another, as a result of important ‘generation defining’ events, mostly occurring relatively early in the life cycle. The experience of World War, at a relatively young age, which is used by Putnam to explain the civicness of the ‘long civic generation’ could be regarded as an generation defining event. Other studies, too, point to the importance and the persisting effect of these generation defining events. Doug McAdam (1988) conducted a project among participants of the Freedom Summer campaign for civil rights in 1964. Most of these participants were relatively young graduates in 1964. McAdam’s study is very relevant for the discussion, because to some extent he can control for the phenomenon of selective recruitment. Not only did he interview the Freedom Summer participants, he also succeeded in assembling a control group of volunteers, who had offered to join the campaign, but eventually, for some reason or another, did not participate. This means that the two groups did not differ with regard to conviction or motivation to participate, since there was no consistent pattern in the reasons why they eventually didn’t participate. Yet McAdam showed that the two groups differed significantly with regard to political efficacy and political activity when he reinterviewed them: the participants defined themselves more strongly as leftist liberals, concerned about ethical issues and civil rights, than the non-participants, notwithstanding the 3 Interestingly, using a similar mechanism, both authors arrive at very different conclusions regarding the level of civicness in younger generations of today, most probably because Inglehart makes a cross-sectional comparison, whereas Putnam focuses on longitudinal comparisons in one country. However, the interplay between materialism/post-materialism and civicness is an interesting field for further examination, see Rahn and Transue (1998). 9 fact that these non-participants too, in 1964 had wanted to join the Freedom Summer campaign. This finding, too, points in the direction of some form of lasting effect of participation. Another example of such generation-defining events would be the tumultuous student revolt of the mid-1960s, the effects of which are clearly presented in the longitudinal Niemi & Jennings study. The authors have surveyed a sample of high school students in 1965, with follow-up interviews in 1973 and 1982. In this last wave of interviews, they still noticed marked differences between those respondents who had participated in demonstrations during the 1965-1973 protest era, and those who had not. E.g., even in 1982 the protesters had higher levels of political knowledge, and they were less likely to respond that politics is too complex to understand. The research results, however, were not conclusive with regard to the causal relation: already in the first wave of interviews, which was conducted in 1965, protesters and non-protesters significantly differed from one another (even though the protest at that moment had not occurred yet). So in this instance, it seems more likely to assume that those who were already interested in politics during their teenage years, had a higher chance to become involved in university protest during the 1965-1973 period. But with regard to the strength of party identification and the attachment to strong personal convictions, future protesters did not differ from future non-protesters in 1965, but these differences were present in 1982. We might speculate that, in this respect, there might a clear causal relation: participating in protest events can strengthen political motivation and political competence. For those respondents who have participated in these events, it is probably more attractive to continue to identify themselves as being progressive or liberal. Jennings (1987, 370) concludes from this study: “Protesters were somewhat different prior to the protest but dramatically different afterwards”. These findings too, point to the existence of a selection and adaptation mechanism: the politically interested liberal students self selected themselves into the protest, but subsequently they seem to have picked up or strengthened certain values during the protest. 3.3 The Insights of Current Youth Socialization Studies The focus of the earlier socialization literature on stability, internalisation of patriotism, and the acceptance of the existing political structures resulted in the effect that political socialization studies lost credibility in an academic environment that came to pay more attention to discontinuities, conflict, contentious politics, etc. Just as unconventional participation from the 1970s on no longer was considered to be a threat to democratic 10 stability (Barnes & Kaase 1979), the rise of younger age groups against the values of their parents could no longer be seen as an indication for lack of political socialization. Yet the prevailing mood in the literature on youth socialization in the 1970s and 1980s was rather sceptical about the possibility to socialize civic attitudes and behaviours. Most studies in this period focused on the effects of civic education, and the conventional wisdom was that civic education had little, or very small effects on political attitudes or political knowledge of pupils (Niemi & Junn 1998, 16; Galston 2001). The seminal study in this respect has been conducted by Langton and Jennings (1968), and their conclusion underscored that the effects of civic education “are extremely weak, in most instances bordering on the trivial” (Langton & Jennings 1968, 858). These results have been certainly influenced by a focus on formal, classroom-based civic education (Galston 2001: 226), no wonder Torney, Oppenheim and Farnen (1975) suggested to go beyond the content, to include how civic education is begin taught, such as the importance of open class room climate. Civic education studies were revived again with the publication of the Niemi and Junn (1998) book, in which the authors base their research on a survey among American youngsters (NAEP Civic Assessment Study). They emerged much more optimistic about the importance of civic education than Langton and Jennings three decades earlier. In their analysis, the participation in civic courses, the recent timing of the courses, the multiplicity of topics as well as the discussion of current political events had significant effects particularly on political knowledge, and therefore, they speculate, also on the future likelihood to vote. Yet these findings for cognitive effects were not replicated for attitudes (in this case trust in government institutions). They conclude from their study: “one finding is clear and consistent: school and curriculum have an enduring impact on the development of civic knowledge in high school students. By enduring, we mean that their effects are positive, statistically significant, and of meaningful size in comparison to and in the presence of other competing explanations of civic knowledge, including individual abilities and interests and home environment” (Niemi & Junn 1998, 142-143, emphasis in original). At first sight, the findings by Niemi and Junn (1998) seem to contradict those of the earlier civic education school (Langton and Jennings 1968). There are three reasons, which might explain the difference between the outcomes of these two research teams. First of all, Niemi and Junn used a more sophisticated measurement of civic education, taking into account not only the simple fact whether the pupil had taken these classes, but also the year in which that was the case, and how many topics had been discussed during these classes, and how many years had passed since the pupil took these classes. These elements seem to provide a more 11 accurate measurement of civic education. Secondly, the 1968 study focused mainly on attitudes, and in 1998 too, the attitudinal effects were considerably weaker than the cognitive effects (see for comparable results, Denver & Hands 1990). A third element, which is not directly mentioned by Niemi and Junn, is that maybe educational practices simply have changed since the 1960s: the ways in which civic classes are being taught are just not the same anymore (Yates & Youniss 1999), which might account for the strengthened findings. There is a tendency to teach civic courses not as much in terms of memory training history exercises (though also history courses had an effect in Niemi and Junn 1998: 143) but with more student interaction and debates. Niemi and Junn capture some of the teaching styles with student evaluations. Civic education indeed has had to respond to the criticism that its efforts did not produce any enduring effects, and it seems that this had led to the development of new educational practices. One of the recent inventions is reflected in service learning. Although this kind of “compulsory volunteerism” has initially been met with some scepticism, evaluation studies show that these kinds of experiences can indeed be effective. About 32% of all public schools in the United States had service learning incorporated into their curricula by 1998, and several research projects have sprung up to evaluate their effects (Galston 2001: 229). The finding is that participation experiences at a relatively early age contribute to the formation of a robust feeling of civic identity, which lasts over long periods of time, even long after the initial socialization experience (Youniss, McLellan & Yates 1997). Confirming these results, Galston discusses in particular one important study here that found adolescents’ political/social activities were influenced by their experiences of service learning in high-school, controlled even for the effects of service performed during college (Astin et al 1999, cited in Galston 2001). These findings, however, do not warrant an overly optimistic view about the possibility to socialise young adolescents into civic traditions: other studies reveal a rather mixed impact, particularly with regard to educational programs. The study of extracurricular activities is one example. Smith, who designed a panel study with adolescents of a Florida High School, finds that one-year participation in extracurricular activities indeed helps to increase political trust among the participants. However, she recorded negative or no effects with regard to generalized trust and efficacy (Smith, 1999). Effects on civic attitudes and behaviours seem to depend on specific project designs and participant characteristics, as well as the extent to which participants themselves can have a say in the way the program is being conducted (Smith 1999; Morgan & Streb 2001). In addition, most studies cannot successfully tackle the challenge of self-selection and pre-existing values and attitudes. 12 Reprise The research on youth socialization so far documents the fact that youthful experiences, whether at school or in extra curricular activities, can have profound influences on civic knowledge and to a certain degree on civic attitudes among youngsters. We do observe a disagreement about which specific elements are most important: the cognitive elements presented in ‘traditional’ civic education, the hidden curriculum as experienced in the class room and school climate, or rather the active involvement in all kinds of community projects. No matter what the precise mechanism involved, it does seem clear that experiences during adolescence have an effect on knowledge, behaviour and attitudes, notwithstanding the more pessimistic research results of the 1960s and 1970s. What is also clear from this summary however, is that most research attention thus far has been directed to mostly what goes on in schools: even the addition of service/community projects have been mainly school-organized. It can be argued however, that there is no reason to focus as exclusively on the school context: other interaction contexts, in which adolescents are involved, might have equally strong effects. It is our purpose therefore, to shift the attention in the studies of youth socialization from schools to other interaction settings, e.g., youth associations. We suggest here that the study of adolescents’ social environments and their involvement in various forms of social interaction is one of the most promising avenues for socialization research. Unfortunately, thus far there are only few studies focusing on the effects of nonschool related youth participation and social interaction. The material, which is available, however, points in the direction of strong and persistent effects of participation in youth organizations on attitudes, network integration and mobilization. This means that people who were already active during their adolescence and student years are much more likely to be targeted by mobilization efforts in their later life (Hanks 1981; Beck & Jennings 1982; Johnson et.al. 1998). In sum, since the literature on youth socialization has thus far been fairly limited to the study of educational goals and school-related civic education, by linking it more explicitly to the area of adult social participation, and especially the growing literature on social capital, youth socialization studies can make a new contribution. At the same time, the focus on youth will further advance our knowledge about the sources of social capital. 13 3.4 Forging the Link: Youth Socialization and Social Capital Studies How can we use the insights of the youth socialization literature for the improvement of social capital research? It is self-evident that we no longer assume as in the traditional socialization literature that children or adolescents are passive recipients of socialization clues provided by their parents or by the school system. Maybe even the opposite phenomenon has emerged over time: the rise of autonomous youth cultures have allowed young people to develop their own value system, partially in opposition to those of their parents. This does not imply, however, that socialization as such should no longer be considered a useful concept to think about the way these values are being developed in the population. It is clear that we have no desire to return to the top-down approach to political socialization. However, we should ask ourselves whether there hasn’t been a tendency to throw out the child with the bathwater. We suggest two ways in which we can adapt the insights of the socialization literature into social capital research. First, we argue that it is important to re-enact the socialization literature, but this time with other actors. Surely, civic education and parents do have important influences on the development of civic attitudes, however, it seems promising to examine further how peer groups, commercial youth culture or mass media haven taken over the role of parents and teachers (Adler & Adler 1986). This means that we can expect a similar process of socialization: young people might adopt the values upheld in their environment, or at least they react to them. The social capital school has suggested that social interactions are an important foundation for the development of civic attitudes and values, and we add that social interactions might be particularly fruitful in adolescent years. Young people spend considerable amounts of time with each other and in (formal and informal) groups and associations. The question is which type of socialising and which type of association membership might be most conducive for the development of civic values and behaviours that last throughout one’s adult life. We develop some theoretical insights and empirical evidence for these causal mechanisms below. Second, while most of the early literature on political socialization saw the process as a oneway, top-down phenomenon, it is clear that socialization should be seen as a more interactive process. Young people might be influenced by their peer group, but they are certainly not passive recipients of the information and the role patterns provided by their peers, and in their turn, they even influence the norms upheld within the group. Socialization no longer can be seen as vertical process: research convincingly demonstrated that adolescents and children do not simply adopt the political orientations of their parents 14 (Youniss 1982). This point requires us to examine the various forms of interactive socialization processes and settings. The findings by the 28 nation IEA study4 on the importance of an open class-room climate for the development of democratic and civic values among 14 year olds, indeed demonstrate that its not necessarily the content of civic classes that is behind the development of civic attitudes, but the character of the setting in which adolescents spend most of their time might be just as influential (Torney-Purta et.al. 2001). This does not imply that the early 1950s and 1960s research was misguided: it could be argued that in that period, parental influence and cultural stability were indeed greater than in the following decades (Hooghe & Jooris 1999). 5. Specifying the Causal Mechanisms: Network and Attitudinal Approaches So far, we have developed the idea that the study of adolescents’ social interactions might be an important addition in the social capital literature. As with other research on social interactions, however, we need to specify the causal mechanism behind this relationship. How do adolescents’ social interactions, for example, in associations, contribute to the development of civic attitudes and behaviours in one’s adult life? We specify here two types of causal mechanisms. The first causal mechanism focuses on networks as a source for future recruitment. The second causal mechanism explains how associational involvement in one’s youth contributes to the development of civic attitudes, not only in the youth phase itself, but also as an enduring feature of one’s personality, which is perpetuated into adulthood. 5.1 The Network Approach Mobilization research has shown that having access to pre-existing networks is of crucial importance for any mobilization campaign to succeed (Freeman 1973). Even if we leave out any possibility of a socialization effect, we can assume that those who have been active in the past, are more likely to be integrated in one of these networks. Participation is to some extent also a self-reinforcing activity: participation generates recruitment networks, which can be utilised by subsequent mobilization campaigns. The research conducted by Verba and associates strongly points to the conclusion that having been asked to join a campaign or an activity is a forceful predictor of participation behaviour. Those who have been active in the past, have a far greater chance to be targeted by such mobilization efforts: “Requests for 4 . International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). 15 political activity are not random. Those who ask others directly to get involved in politics are apt to target likely prospects before making appeals” (Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995, 139). Not only are former members of youth associations structurally embedded in politicised networks, from the point of view of the mobilizing agent, it is also much more reasonable to try to mobilize people of whom you know that they already have an activist history and experience (Verba, Brady & Schlozman 1995; Brady, Schlozman & Verba 1999). It makes no sense to target people with no track record off participation whatsoever, for any mobilization effort. Movement entrepreneurs will show a distinct tendency to approach those who have already demonstrated their ability to participate actively in any kind of collaborative enterprise. Even if we would assume that youth participation does not have any enduring effects on one’s attitudes (however, see below), those who have been active in the past, are far more likely to be targeted by any future mobilization appeal. In his study of the green movements in northern Italy, Diani (1990, 1992) demonstrates that informal networks still play a very important role for adult voluntary associations. Recruitment and political alliances do not seem to depend on formal criteria, but rather on long-established ties of loyalty, ideological agreement and reputation. For example, militants within a formal voluntary association show a tendency to collaborate with those whom they consider trustworthy, and the judgement on trustworthiness is often based on long experiences of joint militancy. Another example of this phenomenon can be found in the research Hooghe conducted on the Belgian green movement. A lot of the people in charge of green associations claimed that their involvement with the green movement started with their membership in the Youth Organization for the Study of Nature, a youth association organizing all kinds of often adventurous activities, ranging from observations of bats at night to building nests for storks in Poland during school holidays. As the current director of the Institute for Nature Preservation testified in one of the interviews: “I have met a lot of people in the Youth Association, and now some of them have acquired more or less the same [rather important] position I did. By now, we know each other for twenty or thirty years. You know I even slept in the same tent as the current director of the Dutch State Institute for Nature Preservation. That just is a wonderful experience” (interview Eckhart Kuijken, in Hooghe 1997, 183-84). 5.2 The Attitudinal Approach The question about the causal mechanism that explains the transmission of values from the experiences of youth social participation to adult’s civic attitudes and values requires us to think through a micro-theory of civic attitudes. In other words, which aspects of youth 16 participation or other social interactions are important for learning generalized attitudes? We need to examine how the membership in youth groups and organizations or other types of social interaction might be able to influence civic values. Several important hypotheses have been developed within the framework of social capital theory about specific group characteristics that might be responsible for the development of generalized values and norms of reciprocity, which form the basis of our speculations. However, not all the insights apply equally to research on adolescents. First and foremost, social capital theory states that face-to-face interactions should be more productive of civic attitudes than so-called ‘chequebook’ organizations. However, this hypothesis has not been confirmed with adults (Wollebæk and Selle, forthcoming), yet it would be interesting to examine whether this holds for the youth context. Face-to-face contacts are seen as useful socialization experiences because they often entail direct and positive co-operation experiences. The issue is that adolescents increasingly interact in imagined communities, whether that be in virtual chat rooms, discussion lists, vis-à-vis webpostings, as members of environmental groups, or participants of rallies and protests. It is therefore an interesting proposition to see whether the participation in face-to-face youth associations has more powerful socializing influences than membership in organizations that do not involve the face-to-face contact. However, it is maybe more important with whom one experiences face-to-face contacts. Second, one response to the question of whom one experiences strong knowledge-based trust with and how this matters for the building of generalized trust focuses on how experiences of strong in-group trust with individuals representing a broad, rather than narrow, sampling of society are transferred to citizens of the ‘outside’ world. In this case, generalized trust involves a leap of faith that the trustworthiness of those one knows can be broadened to include others whom one does not know. The process of broadening might be possible because one had good (co-operative) experiences with individuals of different socio-economic, ethnic and racial backgrounds whom one was not previously well acquainted. In the social capital literature, this type of social interaction has been labelled bridging (Putnam, 1993: 90; 2000), as it brings citizens into contact with people from a cross-section of society. The implication then is that social interaction and the development of knowledge-based trust among dissimilar individuals may lead to the development of more generalized trust, whereas strong knowledge-based or in-group trust among homogeneous individuals may make it much harder for, and indeed even prevent individuals from transferring their in-group trust to the outside world. Having these interaction experiences early in one’s life might be particularly beneficial. The caveat here is that if 17 diversity matters for the socialization of co-operative values, then voluntary associations might not be the place to look as such groups have been found to be relatively homogeneous in character (Mutz and Mondak, 1998; Popielarz, 1999). Therefore, social interactions outside the associational context in schools, neighbourhoods, and other types of social groups might be an important addition here. Third, memberships in hierarchical associations, such as hierarchically structured unions or churches, for example, which do not create mutuality and equality of participation, might not have the same effect as memberships in horizontal groups (Putnam 1995). The reason is that relationships within vertical networks, because of their asymmetry, are not able to create experiences of mutuality and reciprocity to the same extent as relationships in horizontal networks. So far, none of these hypotheses have been successfully confirmed by empirical research at the micro-level for the adult population (but see Marschall and Stolle 2002 on the importance of bridging contacts in the neighbourhood context), but our assumption here is that these experiences are more formative in the life of adolescents. To summarize, we expect two different effects from youth participation. First, one might expect that youth associations offer a good context to create all kinds of networks, which can be used for recruitment and participation efforts later on in the life cycle. Secondly, we might expect that youth participation might have a direct effect on attitudes during adolescence, while we assume that these youthful attitudes tend to be rather stable, and therefore have an effect on adult attitudes. 6. Data and Methods Since there is no ideal data set to our knowledge that measures adolescents’ involvement in various groups, organizations and associations and civic attitudes and network ties longitudinally, we need to resort to patching our results together from various data sources. Our strategy is multi-faceted. First, we examine national samples with retrospective questions on youth involvement, as well as one longitudinal children and youth study in which questions are asked about the involvement at present in several waves of interviews with the same respondents. Our most important data source is a Belgian study on participation and social capital, which was conducted in 1998. The survey consists of 1.341 face-to-face interviews in the 18 to 75 age range and is representative for the population of the Flemish autonomous region in Belgium. Since this survey also contained questions on the membership of youth organization during the respondent’s adolescence years, this data 18 set allows us to investigate the relation between youth participation on the one hand, and adult attitudes and participation levels on the other hand. In addition we utilize the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) conducted by Statistics Canada. This is a very important data set, because the survey has a longitudinal design and a large sample size. The initial longitudinal cohort is being followed every two years to age 25; this cohort currently numbers about 15,000. We utilize here the sample of 10-11 years olds who were first questioned in 1994, because they were the first group that filled in their own questionnaire. However, the problem with the latter survey is that the cohorts are still relatively young (the 10/11 year olds are now 14/15 , but they are the oldest group surveyed in the latest available cycle). Therefore the effects of youth involvement on adult attitudes and behaviours cannot yet be determined. An additional problem is that up to now, the NLSCY survey does not contain yet important indicators of civic attitudes of behaviour. Nevertheless, with the data at hand, we are able to perform some important preliminary analyses in relations to our questions. 7. Empirical analysis: network formation Our first expectation therefore is that the networks created by participants in youth organizations, will also be instrumental in facilitating later mobilization efforts. To test this hypothesis, we rely on the results of a Belgian survey of the adult population (18-75 years), in which not only current participation, but also the participation in youth organizations was documented. In this question, youth was defined as the period between the 6th and the 18th birthday, while the question also stated that this entailed an active membership of at least a year. To start with, the results were impressive: 67 per cent of all respondents indicated that they had been involved in some kind of youth organizations (Table 1). No other type of organization can boost such a wide reach among the population, what, by itself, would be a good reason to include youth associations more systematically in the research on voluntary associations and social capital. Among the youngest group (18-35 years), however, the percentage is even higher: 75 per cent of all respondents indicate that they have been actively involved in youth associations, while this is only 55 per cent for the oldest groups of respondents. This pattern could be an indication of the fact that the answers to this question are not completely reliable, but are the result of faulty or fading memories. For someone in his/her twenties, it is easier to remember youth associations than for a respondent who is 19 seventy years of age. However, a closer analysis of the data shows that the danger that the answers are being distorted should not be overestimated (Table 1). Table 1: Former membership of youth organizations for three age categories 18-35y 36-55y 56-75y Total Scouts 14.3 13.6 8.8 12.5 Christian org. 43.3 43.0 37.3 41.5 Traditional youth org. 54.2 54.0 43.4 51.2 Youth houses 11.8 13.9 3.4 10.3 Nature groups 3.8 3.0 1.7 2.9 Political groups 2.0 3.4 2.4 2.6 Sports groups 43.6 29.6 14.8 30.3 Other youth groups 9.2 7.1 4.7 7.1 Non-traditional youth 53.6 41.3 21.5 40.0 All youth organizations 75.1 69.0 54.5 67.1 Percentage of all respondents indicating at least one membership in this category. Traditional: scouts+christian, non-traditional: all others. n: 1341 If the answers were the result of faulty memories, there is not a good reason to expect that this loss of memory would be selective. Nevertheless: this is what actually happens: while older respondents do seem to remember their former membership of traditional youth organizations, they clearly do not remember their membership of non-traditional organizations. This suggests that the answers rather accurately reflect participation trends: the non-traditional organizations actually flourished only from the 1970s onwards, while the traditional organizations (i.e., Scouts and various christian groups) already came into being from World War I onwards. A typical example on the non-traditional organizations would be the sports clubs for children, which are a quite recent phenomenon. It is also quite telling that the highest percentage of positive answers for the youth houses can be found in the 36 to 55 age group, and these ‘alternative’ youth houses indeed had their heyday in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The historical evidence therefore strongly suggests that these answers are reliable (or at least as reliable as any other survey question), and therefore do offer an accurate measurement of the importance of youth participation. If we want to verify the effect of former youth participation on current levels of participation, our first step would be to explore the relation between these two participation variables. To avoid contamination, we have limited this analysis to the respondents who are over 25 years old, so it is reasonable to expect that they are no longer actively involved in youth associations. In Table 2, for both former members and former non-members of various youth associations we report the average number of current active memberships. 20 Table 2: Current active memberships vs. previous involvement in youth associations Non-members Members women men all women men all Scouts 0.81 1.00 0.90 0.85 1.39 1.18 Christian org. 0.63 0.95 0.80 1.04 1.22 1.13 Traditional youth org. 0.62 0.83 0.72 1.02 1.26 1.15 Youth houses 0.77 1.02 0.89 1.21 1.46 1.34 Nature groups 0.81 1.02 0.91 0.94 1.94 1.65 Political groups 0.80 0.99 0.89 1.61 2.73 2.41 Sports groups 0.74 0.90 0.80 1.16 1.37 1.26 Other youth groups 0.78 1.00 0.89 1.08 2.21 1.50 Non-traditional youth 0.70 0.80 0.74 1.08 1.36 1.26 All youth organizations 0.55 0.67 0.59 1.00 1.21 1.12 Entries: number of active current memberships, for respondents aged 25 or more. Population average: 0.94 Our initial hypothesis seems to be confirmed in this bivariate exploration: while those who have never been a member of a youth association, on average report only 0.6 current memberships, for the former members this is 1.1, or almost double. What is striking, however, is that we do not observe any differences between the traditional and the nontraditional organizations. While the traditional organizations are explicitly aimed at character building or influencing the value patterns of their members, this is not the case for most of the non-traditional organizations. These explicit goals, however, do not seem to have an effect on future participation behaviour, which could serve as an indication for the fact that it is not these explicit goals which have the strongest influence, but rather the latent functions of youth organizations. Of course, this relation still does not prove causality or the existence of mobilization networks. We might still speculate that a kind of self-selection effect occurs, and that those who were already joiners by the age of ten, have simply kept up this habit during their entire life. When we look at it in more detail, however, the recruitment function is rather apparent. For sports, nature and political organizations, we have data on the corresponding youth organization. For each one of these organizations, it is clear that while their recruitment among the general population remains limited (except for sports organizations), it is impressive among those who have already been involved during their youth phase. While these strong relations might not prove any causal direction, at least they are consistent with the assumption that youth participation does create strong mobilizing networks (Table 3). 21 Table 3: Recruitment into sports, nature and political organizations former members of former non-members of corresponding youth corresponding youth organization organization sports organizations 36.8 18.2 nature organizations 25.3 5.6 political organization 42.9 4.5 all 23.5 7.0 5.6 Entries are percentages of former members of resp. youth sport, youth nature and youth political groups, who are currently members of the corresponding adult organizations. Only respondents older than 25 are included. The results in Table 3 show, for example, that of all former members of youth sports associations, 37% are still involved in adult sport groups, whereas among those who haven’t been a member of a youth sports club, only 18% are currently involved. For politics, the relation is even more pronounced: more than 40% of those who have been a member of a political youth club, are still a member of a political party or a political organization, while among the general population, this is but 6%. No matter what the causal relation involved, it is clear that youth participation is indeed a very strong predictor for adult participation. This also becomes clear if we take the step to a multivariate model, with the number of currently held memberships (both active as passive) as a dependent variable. The zero-order correlation between current membership and previous participation in youth organizations is .24, so we can safely use them as resp. dependent and independent variables (Table 4). Table 4: Explaining current membership status B (SE B) Age .013 (.005) Gender -.130 (.111) Education level .081 (.021) Income .080 (.021) Time on television -.079 (.042) Religious involvement .706 (.119) Former youth member .600 (.121) Cte. .361 (.425) 2 adj. r .15 beta .10*** -.04 .14*** .14*** -.06 .18*** .16*** OLS Regression. Only respodents older than 25, n=1174. Dependent variable: number of current memberships, both active and passive. In this regression model, the effect of former membership in youth organizations on current, adult membership is indeed strong and significant. Even if we assume that youth organizations do not have any additive effects, this would imply that participation habits are picked up very early on in the life cycle. In the next analysis, we introduce a distinction between former membership in traditional (i.e., the organizations which were already active before World War II) and non-traditional 22 (i.e., new groups, flourishing from the 1960s onwards) youth organizations to see whether they have a differential impact on later recruitment. Table 5: Explaining current membership status current membership Age .12*** Gender -.02 Education level .14*** Income .14*** Time on television -.06 Religious involvement .19*** Traditional youth org. .10*** Non-traditional youth .16*** 2 adj. r .16 OLS Regression. Only resp. older than 25, n=1174. Dependent variable: number of current memberships, both active and passive. Entries are standardized regression coefficients. The analysis shows that non-traditional youth organizations have a stronger influence than the traditional ones. To some extent, this might be a result of the fact that, in general, the reported membership of non-traditional organizations is more heavily concentrated within younger groups of respondents, while the membership of traditional organizations is spread evenly among the entire population. Still, the results are interesting because typically, the traditional youth organizations emphasize character-building and installing a sense of community ethos. The figures show, however, that these efforts do not lead to a more activist adult lifestyle, in comparison with the members of non-traditional organizations. This would allow us to question the supposedly character-building effects of Scouts and other traditional youth associations in comparison with other associations. Specific interaction contexts do make a difference, but these effects do not necessarily result from the explicit and official goals of an organization. The fact that former members of non-traditional organizations are more active later in their life than the members of traditional organizations also point in the direction of a network explanation. A typical feature of Scouts and Christian youth organizations is that there is no ‘natural’ follow-up organization: somewhere at the age of 20, people leave the scouts, and in some way or another they find their way into adult associational life. It seems that for some reasons, a lot of them do not complete this transition. For the non-traditional organizations, on the other hand, a follow-up organization is at hand. As can be gathered from Table 3: people belonging to a youth sports club find it easy to simply move along toward an adult sports club, while for nature and political organizations the same relation hold. This implies that for these non-traditional organizations, the existing networks can be more easily 23 transposed toward adult associational life, than this is the case for the traditional youth organizations. 8. Empirical analysis: attitudinal effects In this section we want to focus on attitudinal effects of adolescent participation. This requires two distinct steps: our first goal is to test whether the relationship between youth involvement and youth civic attitudes and behaviours is indeed observable. Our second goal is to test whether this relationship is mostly temporary or lasting. The latter would imply that the effects of youth involvement might be observed in adult value patterns. Here again, we rely on secondary analysis of data that is not ideal, which means that the materials presented in this section offer but tentative proof of our hypotheses. First, we focus on the claim that, among young people, participation has an effect on democratic values. Our first source here would be the IEA study, which was conducted in 1998 among 90.000 14-year olds in 28 countries (Torney-Purta et.al. 2001). A first, and rather important finding of this study is that even 14 year olds already maintain firmly established ideas of what is required of a ‘good citizen’: in their view, good citizens not only take part in elections, but also participate in all forms of public life. In this study, the children were offered a list of possible characteristics of a “good citizen”. On a 1 to 4 scale (1 being very unimportant; 4 very important), obeying the law was considered the most important item (average of 3.65), but followed rather closely by promoting human rights (3.24), patriotism (3.20) and voting in elections (3.12). The 14 year-olds, however, were less convinced that good citizens should engage in political discussions (average 2.37) or join political parties (2.11) (Torney-Purta et.al. 2001, 80). Again, this implies that even among 14 year olds, democratic attitudes are relatively established: “Fourteen-year-olds are already members of a political culture. They possess concepts of the social and economic responsibilities of government that largely correspond to those of adults in their societies” (Torney-Purta et.al. 2001, 70). The study furthermore demonstrates that the participation in the school council and civic knowledge are significantly related to the intention to vote in elections, even controlling for the expected years of further education, the literary resources available at home, classroom climate, the frequency of watching television news and amount of civic education received (Torney-Purta et.al. 2001, 150). 24 The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth The National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth in Canada’s cycles 1 and 3 are utilized in order to understand the relationship between adolescents’ social involvement and civic attitudes and behaviours. The survey contains various items that form two scales that we employ here: one scale on potential/past informal help provided to others in need, and another scale on volunteerism.5 Both scales tap important precursors of civic attitudes and behaviours, and are therefore relatively well-suited for our purposes, even though we do not have direct measures of trust and reciprocity. Since the data were made available only one week before the conference, we limit our analysis here to preliminary presentations, correlations and partial correlations. Our main independent variable here is the membership in youth clubs and groups, such as Boy and Girls Scouts,6 and we also include measures of membership in sports groups. The 10/11 year-old survey respondents answered this question in a self-administered questionnaire in 1994. In 1994, more than a quarter of all respondents belonged to an association such as the Boy or Girl Scouts (Table 7). Table 7: Membership in Boy and Girls Scouts and similar groups (10/11 year olds) Categories Not a member Member less Member Member, who than once a attends 1-3 attends 4 or week times a week more times a week In % (N=1571) 71.2% 6.4% 19.9% 2.5% Membership in such groups seems slightly more pervasive of a phenomenon in Canada compared to Belgium, though our data is not directly comparable, as Table 7 presents an overview merely of a specific age group of children. However, the variance along this variable is sufficient for our test on its relationship to the scales of Informal Help and Volunteering, both of which have been created from the third cycle, data in 1998 (same respondents). We chose the third cycle for our test, in order to see whether attitudes are 5 The Help scale included the following items: 1) I help others my age who are sick, 2) I offer to help others with their tasks, 3) I will help someone who has been hurt, 4) I offer to clear up a mess, 5) I will invite bystanders to join a game, 6) I show sympathy. Factor analysis (principal component analysis) determined one dimension, and the items created an additive scale with a Cronbach’s alpha of .79. The Volunteerism scale consists of the following items: 1) Help without pay adopting a cause, 2) helped without pay with fund-raising, 3) Helped without pay in community, 4) Helped without pay in other activities, 5) Helped neighbors without pay. Again, the items formed one dimension with a factor analysis, and were added to a scale with Cronbach’s alpha of .55, which falls just within the limits of acceptability. 6 The question was phrased: “Are you a member in clubs such as Boy or Girl Scouts or other such groups?” In addition, the frequency of attendance of meetings was estimated. 25 lasting. Though how do young people score on these questions? Are youngsters as selfish and individualistic as the debate on the decline of social capital might lead us to assume? Only a very low percentage of pupils indicated that they would not help in various situations, even though we have to admit that the informal help questions might suffer from social desirability answers. For example, only 12% said that they would never invite bystanders to join a game, and only about 8% said they would never help others who are sick, etc. Most pupils answered that they help others sometimes, and about 38%, for example, said they help others often who are sick. On a scale from 1-3, the average score on the informal help scale is: 2.2 (st.dev=.41). Volunteering is a bit less pervasive, but also here only 16% of the sample said that they never volunteer their time without pay, and about 26% had at least volunteered in one of the mentioned forms. On a scale from 0 to 1, the average score is here .35 (st.dev=.27). In sum, helpfulness for others and volunteering are not extremely wide-spread in Canadian youngsters, but there is no sign that children grow up without any sense of cooperation. The question now is whether the membership in clubs and groups can in any way predict future attitudes/behaviours on volunteering and helpfulness. We present our bivariate results in Table 8. Table 8: Social Involvement and Helping/Volunteerism: Bivariate Results Bivariate Youth Associations and Sport groups no Sport groups with Correlations Clubs, such as Boy and coach coach /N Girls Scouts, measured in 1994. Helping Others .11*** .03 .03 N=1569 N=1563 N=1562 scale, measured in 1998 Volunteerism Scale, .13*** .07** .11*** N=1571 N=1565 N=1564 measured in 1998 Happiness, Item in .01 .03 .06* N=1614 N=1608 N=1607 1998 *p<.1; **p<.05; ***P<.001 Table 8 indicates that the previous membership in groups such as Boy and Girl Scouts have most beneficial and consistent effects on later civic attitudes that relate to cooperation. Similar effects (though mostly on volunteerism) can be found with membership in sports groups with or without coaches. The assumption here is that regular training and team spirit developed in some forms of sport certainly contribute to helping/cooperative attitudes. However, not every kind of youth involvement has the potential to influence later civic 26 attitudes, and it is important to make more fine-grained distinctions (our data set does not allow for more distinctions here). In addition, other values such as happiness (or honesty, results not shown) are not particularly influenced by any of these groups. Table 9: Social Involvement and Civic Attitudes: Partial Correlations, controlling for SES of parents, utilizing longitudinal weights Partial Correlations/ Youth Associations and Sport groups no Sport groups with N=1359 Clubs, such as Boy and coach coach Girls Scouts, measured in 1994. Helping Others .07** .03 .05* scale, measured in 1998 Volunteerism Scale, .07** .10*** .14*** measured in 1998 Happiness, Item in .02 .00 .06* 1998 *p<.1; **p<.05; ***P<.001 The significance of the results holds also when controlling for the socio-economic resources of the child’s parents, which is necessary as civic attitudes are certainly also a result of income and education of the main care-givers. In addition, the results in Table 9 include longitudinal weights, controlling for the effects of the longitudinal design. SES was measured along five dimensions, the level of education of both care-givers, the level of prestige of the occupation of both care-givers, and household income. When controlled, the correlations for club membership become smaller (r=.07 significant at the p=.008 for clubs), whereas the correlations for sports groups were strengthened, particularly for volunteerism. This means that socio-economic resources of parents explain parts of the variance in civic attitudes of club-goers, but for sports the relationship between parental socio-economic resources and membership in sports groups must be negative (therefore leading to the strengthening of the correlation between membership and civic attitudes when socioeconomic resources are controlled). However, we can summarize our results here and state that groups such as Boy and Girls Scouts as well as sports groups seem particularly useful in inculcating a sense of cooperative spirit, which is reflected in the results on the two scales of help and volunteerism. However, future exploration of this data needs to include controls for current memberships and pre-existing values in order to disentangle the actual and lasting effects of past membership. 27 The Belgian Participation Survey The 1998 Belgian study offers an opportunity to investigate another causal link, this time between youth participation and adult attitudes. This kind of analysis, however, tends to interfere with the network mechanism we identified earlier: if youth participation has effects on adult participation, and, in turn we assume this form of participation to have some kind of socialization effect, it becomes all the more difficult to single out the direct socialization effect of youth participation. Nevertheless, this is what we try to do in the next analyses, which are based again on the same 1998 Belgian survey. The dependent variable here is the likelihood to vote, given the fact that both the Jennings/Niemi study, and the IEA study suggest that youth participation might have the most powerful effects on political efficacy and political involvement (Table 10). It should be added however, that this is a bit of an odd question in the Belgian context, since Belgium is one of the few countries in the world where voting is obligatory (Hooghe & Pelleriaux 1998). Therefore we inquired whether respondents would still continue to vote if the legal obligation would be abolished. Table 10: The Effect of Youth Participation on Likelihood to Vote B (SE) Gender -.18 (.08) Education .10 (.02) Income .03 (.02) Time on Television -.12 (.05) Watching News on Television .38 (.08) Religious Involvement .11 (.10) Married .03 (.09) Children -.04 (.03) Current Memberships .08 (.02) Having Been a Member of Youth .24 (.09) Association Constant 43.00 (.25) 2 r .18 beta -.06* .24*** .07 -.07 .14*** .03 .01 -.05 .11*** .08** OLS Regression, n=1341. This kind of analysis appears to confirm the results of the McAdam and Jennings/Niemi studies: youth participation bolsters political efficacy and political involvement: even controlling for current participation, those who have been a member of a youth association are still significantly more likely to vote, than those who have not been a member. If we combine this with the finding from the IEA study that, even among 14 year olds, the moral obligation to vote, is already a key element of their citizenship concept, this strengthens our 28 case that not only are these concepts shaped early in life, but they also tend to have persistent effects during the life cycle. In the next analysis, we again introduce a distinction between traditional and non-traditional youth organizations, but this time with a measurement scale for a utilitarian conception of individualism as a dependent variable. This scale, which is mostly based on the work of Robert Bellah et.al. (1985), captures the rejection of solidarity and reciprocity. A typical statement for this scale would be: “Looking after your own personal success is more important than to have a good relation with your fellow men”. Table 11: Explaining adult individualism utilitarian individualism Age .14*** Gender -.13*** Education level -.23*** Income -.04 Time on television .10*** Current Membership -.10** Religious involvement -.13*** Traditional youth org. -.02 Non-traditional youth -.10*** adj. r2 .24 OLS Regression. Only respondents older than 25, n=1174. Entries are standardized OLS coefficients. The striking result of this analysis is that, even controlling for current membership status, the former membership of at least non-traditional youth organizations significantly relates to adult attitudes. This would allow us to speculate that the correlation between participation and attitudes, which could be observed at a relatively early age, is continued throughout the life cycle. 9. Conclusion: toward a life cycle approach of social capital? Our paper is an exploration into the role of adolescents’ social participation for adult civic attitudes and networks, both of which are important dimensions of social capital. Because of the exploratory character of this paper, we had to rely on secondary analysis of data sets, which were not collected for this purpose. This implies, e.g., that we did not have access to uniform concepts or measurement standards. However, even with these limitations in mind, we were able to perform important tests into the link between youth socialization, attitudes and networks. First of all, already at a relatively young age, children do seem to have 29 developed fairly elaborated citizenship concepts: they have ideas of what is to be expected of a good citizen, and some attitudinal dimensions of social capital are already formed. This implies that it does make sense to study adolescence, and not only in selected contexts, such as schools, but also the social participation of youngsters. The research of social capital should be directed not only toward the learning school of democracy, but also to the kindergarten of democracy. Second, empirically we observe among adolescents a similar relation between participation and attitudes, as we typically find among adults. Even after four years of the original participation experience at a relatively young age, the connection between participation and selected civic attitudes was clearly observable. While this finding, too, does not offer any proof of causality, it suggests that a participatory pattern is established early in life. Third, the continuity we observed between youth and adult participation as well as youth participation and adult attitudes also points in the direction of relatively stable patterns throughout the life-cycle. We have found evidence that youth participation affects adults’ civicness through networks and the early formation of attitudes. Several questions remain unanswered. Better data and models should allow us to better disentangle the effects that result from pre-existing values and attitudes before the onset of youth participation, from actual participation effects. Longitudinal data over longer periods of time would also reveal how lasting the effects of youth socialization are, and how they compare to other influences, such as civic education, institutional experiences, and parental up-bringing. Finally, our analysis did not successfully test the attitudinal approach, since our distinctions between the types of youth social participation were rather limited. These are important questions that can only be solved with better data collections and powerful research designs. However, our analysis of the literature and preliminary findings also have implications for the research on social capital. Research of this kind will reveal more about the sources of social capital that are located in one’s adolescence era and therefore also open up policy options. If social and political participation is indeed not as widespread among the adult population today, several testable hypotheses emerge from our research. First, it might be that the problem starts already with youth participation, as fewer citizens participate at an early age. Second, even with an adequate youth participation experience, it could be that the network and recruitment function of earlier established networks are more likely to be interrupted because of higher geographic mobility. Third, the types of networks adolescents engage in might have changed in character (e.g. too loose, bonding but not bridging, fewer regular interactions, commercially organized, etc.) so that they are less conducive to the socialization of civic attitudes in adolescence. These hypotheses might advance our insights 30 into the discussion about the alleged decline of social capital in some parts of the Western world. 31 References Adler, P. & Adler, P. (1998), Peer Power. 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