Predicting Success: Revisiting Assumptions about Family Political Socialization

Abstract

This study, guided by family communication patterns theory, examined the role of family communication in political socialization. We tested whether certain communication styles were associated with higher levels of political similarity within the family. Additionally, the independent influences of the mother and father, as well as the direction of these influences, were considered. Results suggest that different communication styles are associated with higher levels of political similarity. Additionally, it was found that children were more likely to share their mothers' political attitudes than their fathers'. Explanations for these findings are discussed and implications focusing on the role of communication in the socialization literature are considered.

Keywords:

• Family Communication Patterns
• Political Socialization
• Political Development
• Family Communication

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the two blind reviewers as well as the editor, Dr Kory Floyd, for their helpful comments and suggestions throughout the review process. Their insights strengthened our manuscript considerably.

Notes

[1] Responses from parents were not sought because, in line with the findings by Dalhouse and Frideres (1996), children's perception of their parents’ beliefs and communication were more predictive of their attitudes than the accuracy of their perception based on parents’ responses.

[2] Up to this point the terms “mother” and “father” were used for clarity purposes. On the actual survey, however, students were told to consider their “primary female caregiver” and “primary male caregiver” and to answer the questions with these people in mind. This was done to account for in instances in which stepparents, grandparents, adoptive parents, or others were the child's parental figure while growing up. Because we were concerned about transmission processes in the household, we refrained from generalizations regarding who was actually raising the children.

[3] A CFA was conducted in AMOS to determine the items for the communication scales (mother-conformity, mother-conversation, father-conformity, father-conversation). The entire scale was first included in the CFA. Items were removed based on the residual provided by this test. Items were removed until a CFA confirmed that the measurement model was an appropriate fit based on the following metrics: Chi-square test, CMIN/DF, CFI, and RMSEA. Table 1 depicts these metrics for the original scale and the final scale version used for hypothesis testing.

[4] Complete versions of our measures are available upon request. Please direct any inquiries to the lead author.