Longitudinal associations between civic engagement and interpersonal needs during the 2018 US midterm elections

Abstract

Civic engagement is thought to enhance personal well-being, yet little research has examined links between civic engagement, burdensomeness, and belongingness during periods of heightened civic action. Late adolescent college students (N = 235, M_age=19.43) completed daily assessments of civic engagement (community service, environmentalism, standard political behavior, social movement behavior), belongingness, and burdensomeness for one week during the 2018 US midterm elections. Greater daily community service and environmentalism was associated with higher daily belongingness and lower daily burdensomeness. Lower daily belongingness was associated with higher next-day community service. Greater daily standard political and social movement engagement was associated with greater daily burdensomeness. Greater daily social movement engagement was associated with lower daily belongingness. Findings help to advance theory on youth civic development.

Notes

1 Constraining the autoregressive, cross-lagged, and daily covariances produced a slightly better model fit relative to a model where these parameters were freely estimated (ΔCFI>.01), suggesting that the values for the constrained parameters were highly similar.

2 Exploratory analyses examined whether estimates for all models varied for youth assessed during the 2018 mid-term election versus those assessed in the two-weeks after. These analyses produced similar results across data collection week.