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Paths to Active Citizenship: The Develo... - Document (2 M) |
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| Author |
Shuler, Lisa O'Leary |
| Title |
Paths to Active Citizenship: The Development Of and Connection Between Civic Engagement Involvement and Attitudes in College Students |
| Date created |
2010 |
| Abstract |
Higher education has renewed its focus on civic engagement due to a growing recognition of the distinctive opportunities for students to internalize civic values during college. This unique role has become increasingly important in context of the shifting trend in American youth away from traditional political participation towards increasing involvement in civic life. Past research in higher education and youth civic engagement has suggested connections between participation in and attitudes supportive of civic engagement across both civic and political realms. To further investigate this relationship, this dissertation looked at how students' civic engagement involvement and attitudes develop over time, tracking how participation levels in civic, political, and expressive activities impact the acquisition of a comprehensive set of civic attitudes during students' undergraduate tenure. The specific attitudes of interest in this study were students' self-efficacy through community service, politics, and civic involvement, commitment to civic accountability, and tolerance of diversity. This dissertation utilized data from two cohorts (N=137) of a multi-year study at a single institution as its main data source, with data from a nationally-representative sample of college students used for scale development and anchoring. A mixed-method three-factor within subjects design was used to explore the development within and between students' civic engagement involvement and attitudes across their four years at college by gender and minority status. Through the Rasch rating scale model, repeated measures analyses of variance, and repeated measures analyses of covariance, students' longitudinal commitment to civic engagement was shown to be much more complex than expected. Canonical correlation analysis was then used to address the connection between students' involvement and attitudes within their freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior years. While the results of this study were typically non-significant with regard to students' development of civic engagement involvement and attitudes, these findings provided valuable insights into the relationship between participation in specific types of activities at certain stages of students' college experiences and the acquisition of particular civic engagement attitudes. |
| Use Restrictions |
I hereby allow Boston College to include and preserve my dissertation/thesis in electronic form in the Boston College Institutional Repository, which shall include the right to publicly post my dissertation/thesis on the World Wide Web. I will retain copyright ownership, but I grant to Boston College the non-exclusive right to copy, distribute, and publicly display my dissertation/thesis in any form as may be necessary or convenient in the future as file formats, storage media, and distribution mechanisms evolve. |
| Subject |
Attitudes |
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Civic engagement |
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College students |
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Involvement |
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Longitudinal research |
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Rasch measurement |
| Publisher |
Boston College |
| Link to Item |
2345/1184 |
| Thesis Advisor |
Ludlow, Larry H. |
| Degree Name |
PhD |
| Degree Grantor |
Boston College. Lynch School of Education. |
| Sys. No. |
000002000 |
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