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ABSTRACT
This study looks at the socialisation of internal political efficacy. It assesses the link from individual background, through socio-political learning experiences, to the perception of political competence. A quantitative survey of thresholders (n 849), i.e. adolescents on the threshold of voting age in the Republic of Ireland provides data for analysis, with a particular focus on their socialisation experiences in home, school and associational settings. It finds a higher sense of internal efficacy among young males than females, irrespective of socialisation experience. Family politicisation is found to mitigate the differences in internal efficacy associated with socio-economic status. Though some pseudo-political mastery experiences from school and associational environs assessed here are linked to thresholder’s internal efficacy, the link is minor.
Acknowledgements
The author is indebted to Clodagh Harris, University College Cork for academic supervision of this study.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. This represents 98 per cent of the 867 students aged 15–17 in classes selected for survey. Eighteen students were excluded from analysis; 13 did not engage with the survey and 5 were visiting short-term students.
2. These strata are the principal manner in which the department with responsibility for education categorise schools. Bivariate correlation confirms a lack of relationship between school type and location, and internal efficacy.
3. As respondents were not eligible for representative office the Craig et al. (Citation1990) item was appended by ‘of my age’ here to set peers as a more appropriate reference group.
4. In the nine cases where a respondent did not respond to one of the efficacy items, his/her score for internal efficacy involves a mean replacement based on response to the other three items.
5. Chief Examiner’s Report 2009, accessed 20 June, 2011 (http://www.examinations.ie/archive/examiners_reports/JC_CSPE_2009.pdf).
6. The statistical significance of a relationship is indicated by the superscript appended to a coefficient. The absence of an asterisk indicates that a statistically significant relationship is not present, the presence of an asterisk indicates a relationship at the following levels of statistical significance (*p < .05, **p < .01, and ***p < .001).
7. The assumptions of the linear regression model were met in respect of; non-autocorrelation, normality, homoscedasticity and collinearity of independent variables. While the internal efficacy variable has a lower and upper bound, the model is not problematic in prediction as casewise diagnostics indicate that only 4.6 per cent of cases have standardised residual values greater than ±1.96, only 0.5 per cent have standardised residual values greater than ±2.58, and no case has a standardised residual value greater than ±3.29. Tests were also conducted to check for influential outliers in line with Field’s (Citation2009) criteria.
8. The lack of link with age and nationality was evident in bivariate correlation. A parent nationality variable was also found to not have a link with thresholder internal efficacy in bivariate and multivariate analysis.
9. Spearman bivariate coefficients between socio-economic status and each parent political interest variable indicate this; father (r .201***), and mother (r .166***).