Does Civic Education Matter?: The Power of Long-Term Observation and the Experimental Method

Abstract

Despite consensus regarding the civic shortcomings of American citizens, no such scholarly consensus exists regarding the effectiveness of civic education addressing political apathy and ignorance. Accordingly, we report the results of a detailed study of students enrolled in introductory American politics courses on the campuses of two large research universities. The study provides pre- and postmeasures for a broad range of political attitudes and behaviors and includes additional long-term observations in survey waves fielded 6, 12, and 18 months after the conclusion of the class. Long-term observation provides leverage absent in many prior studies and enables us to compare the changes we observe during the semester to those that take place beyond the confines of the classroom and during important political events, such as the 2012 presidential election. Also embedded in the study is an experiment designed to assess whether students’ enthusiasm for “new media” (e.g., blogs) can be harnessed in American politics courses to stimulate long-lasting political engagement. We find evidence that civic education matters for some, but not all, measures of political engagement. Moreover, we find evidence that what one does in the classroom also matters. For some dimensions of political engagement, this study finds evidence of lasting civic education effects and the experimental manipulation compellingly locates the source of some engagement variation in the classroom.

Keywords:

• classroom experiment
• civic education
• civic learning
• experimental research
• panel study
• political participation
• political cynicism
• political engagement
• political knowledge
• political trust
• political tolerance
• political voice
• voting

Acknowledgements

We thank Rich Stanislaw, Kent State University for fielding the experiment in his American Politics sections and we thank our research assistants, Jordan Rogers and Matt Frei, for their work fielding the surveys and assisting with the analysis. Finally, we appreciate the work of our teaching assistants Rebecca Arrington, Jessica Kosorock Biggs, Ryan Leavitt, Justin Raevsky, Jillian Wheeler, Ron Nuzzolillo, Jordan Rogers, and Oindrila Roy.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at www.tandfonline.com/upse.

Notes

We use the term political knowledge to denote the degree to which citizens pay attention to, understand and know about the political world (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Luskin 1987; Zaller 1992).

Response rates are calculated as the number of completed surveys divided by the number of eligible respondents. The study includes a small number of students who could have withdrawn from the class, but who would have participated in at least some of the writing assignments.

After the semester, participants were offered $10 gift cards to Amazon.com for completing each subsequent wave. In addition, two randomly selected Wave 4 and 5 respondents received $50 gift cards.

See CIRCLE (2011).

See CIRCLE (2012).

Empirically, the patterns are similar on both campuses for other items.

Also see the Supplementary Online Appendix for randomization checks. Across a range of indicators, there are no differences between treatment and control groups.

Again, the pattern for this item is slightly different if we include those that answered the first two survey waves, but attrited from subsequent waves. Again, the second wave effect is a bit larger and statistically significant—though only at the 90% confidence level in this case (Wave 2–Wave 1 difference = 0.64; standard error = 0.33; n = 390). Though we remain a bit unsure about the causal mechanism, we suspect that bloggers felt they needed to be provocative in order to raise the profile of their blogs and that they gravitated toward negativity in order to be provocative (see Mutz 2006).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ryan L. Claassen

Ryan L. Claassen is an Associate Professor of political science at Kent State University. His research investigates political engagement — especially the role of engagement shaping the capacity of individuals and groups of individuals in the American public to effectively contribute to public opinion and to compete democratically. He is the author of Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans?: Party Activists, Party Capture, and the “God Gap” (Cambridge University Press, 2015). His work has also appeared in American Politics Research, Journal of Politics, Political Behavior, Political Research Quarterly, and Public Opinion Quarterly.

J. Quin Monson

J. Quin Monson is an Associate Professor of political science at Brigham Young University (BYU) and a Senior Scholar with BYU’s Center for the Study of Elections and Democracy. His research is in public opinion, campaigns and elections, survey research methods, and religion and politics. He is the coeditor of several books and monographs on congressional and presidential elections and most recently coauthored Seeking the Promised Land: Mormons and American Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His research has also appeared in Political Analysis, Public Opinion Quarterly, Political Research Quarterly, Political Behavior, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.