Projection Bias and Youth’s and Parents’ Perceptions of Their Joint Political Discussions

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the idea that youth’s perceptions of the frequency of family political discussions and of parental political support mostly derive from their own political interest, a form of projection bias. Tests were performed of whether the same bias applies to parents, and whether youth’s and parents’ perceptions of political discussions and political support overlap to only a limited extent. Multivariate multiple regression analyses, combining two age cohorts of adolescent-parent pairs (509 13-year-olds and 541 16-year-olds), supported these expectations, indicating that parents and youth live, at least in part, in different perceptual worlds. These findings explain differences in youth’s and parents’ reports of political interactions, illuminate the theoretical models indicating that family discussions determine whether or not a child is interested in politics, and show the limitations of relying solely on reports of either youth or parents when studying the influence of family political discussions on youth’s political development.

Acknowledgments

This study was made possible by access to data from the Political Socialization Program, a longitudinal research program at YeS (Youth & Society) at Örebro University, Sweden (Amnå et al., 2009). The program was supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences [M2008-0073:1-PK]. The study was approved by the regional Ethical Committee at Uppsala, Sweden. We want to thank Dr. Metin Özdemir at Örebro University, Sweden, for his help with the data analyses in an earlier version of this study.

Notes

1. All the factor analyses in the Measures section were principal axis factor analyses with promax rotation.

2. We found that all latent constructs were invariant, as indicated by the comparison between an unconstrained model to a competing model in which factor loadings were constrained to be equal across the two cohorts: Political interest, Δχ² = 5.084, Δdf = 5, p = 0.41, ΔCFI = 0.00; political discussion, Δχ² = 1.441, Δdf = 2, p = 0.49, ΔCFI = 0.00; political support, Δχ² = 10.566, Δdf = 8, p = 0.23, ΔCFI = 0.00.

3. The measures used in the study were also available two years later for the younger cohort, and one year later for the older cohort. Thus, we regressed the youth- and parent-reported frequency of political discussions and parents’ support at T₂ on youth’s and parents’ political interest at T₂ and T₁ in each age cohort. Each measure was also regressed on its lagged score. The results mirror the results obtained from adopting the cross-sectional approach. Hence, we draw the conclusion that the projection effect observed in this study is not a random phenomenon.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation [M2008-0073:1-PK].