Why We Vote by David E. Campbell

Author:David E. Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2006-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 6.1. Impacts on voter turnout. All control variables set to their means. Monitoring the Future.

The bottom-line conclusion from the models relating voluntarism in adolescence to behavior in early adulthood is that volunteering begets both more volunteering and voting. Both are examples of civically motivated behavior (although, of course, voting also has a political dimension), supporting the hypothesis that volunteering in high school fosters adherence to civic norms. It could also be, however, that volunteering simply fosters participation in collective action of all types, including explicitly political activity. If true, this would suggest that the causal process at work is not that adolescents develop an internalized norm toward civically oriented activity specifically, but simply that they become “doers,” engaging in a wide variety of activities. Of course, these explanations need not be considered mutually exclusive either.

Sorting out the two explanations requires testing whether voluntarism impacts politically oriented activity. If so, it is unlikely that voluntarism fosters civic norms, and thus civically oriented participation, per se. Therefore, the models displayed in Tables 6.3 and 6.4 test the link between voluntarism in high school and, respectively, the expression of political voice and electoral activism. Both of these indices resemble the measures in previous chapters. Electoral activism is measured as having worked as a volunteer for a political campaign or given money to a political candidate or party, while the political voice index includes participating in a lawful demonstration, writing to public officials, and boycotting certain products or stores.14 With only one exception (wave 2 for political voice), political interest is a consistently positive predictor of both electoral activism and political voice. Television viewing has a negative impact in every case, but only reaches statistical significance in wave 3 of the political voice model.

TABLE 6.3

Voluntarism in Adolescence and Political Voice in Adulthood

Wave 1 (1–2 years) Wave 2 (3–4 years) Wave 3 (9–10 years)

High school voluntarism 0.712 (0.521) 0.655 (0.460) 0.755 (0.488)

Television viewing −0.917 (0.749) −0.632 (0.675) −1.775*** (0.677)

Parents’ education 2.109*** (0.641) 0.696 (0.534) 2.136*** (0.596)

Political interest 1.881*** (0.716) 0.041 (0.569) 3.448*** (0.697)

African American −0.089 (0.392) −0.370 (0.338) −0.509 (0.390)

Female −0.303 (0.254) 0.133 (0.219) −0.115 (0.236)

Observations 386 355 325

Pseudo-R2 0.06 0.01 0.10

Source: Monitoring the Future.

Note: Results from ordered logistic regression. Standard errors in parentheses. Independent variables standardized on 0–1 scale. Weighted data.

* significant at .10 ** significant at .05 *** significant at .01

TABLE 6.4

Voluntarism in Adolescence and Electoral Activism in Adulthood

Wave 1 (1–2 years) Wave 2 (3–4 years) Wave 3 (9–10 years)

High school voluntarism −0.342 (0.647) 0.784 (0.611) 0.332 (0.559)

Television viewing −1.122 (0.836) −0.693 (0.834) −0.561 (0.809)

Parents’ education 0.224 (0.724) 1.413** (0.685) 1.593** (0.678)

Political interest 2.984*** (0.839) 2.493*** (0.758) 3.443*** (0.805)

African American −0.081 (0.444) −0.582 (0.499) 0.020 (0.447)

Female 0.281 (0.301) −0.222 (0.282) −0.066 (0.274)

Observations 386 353 326

Pseudo-R2 0.04 0.04 0.08

Source: Monitoring the Future.

Note: Results from ordered logistic regression. Standard errors in parentheses. Independent variables standardized on 0–1 scale. Weighted data.

* significant at .10 ** significant at .05 *** significant at .01

Most important, in no case does high school voluntarism have a statistically significant impact

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