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The Development of Political Attitudes

and Behaviour Among Young Adults
a a
Richard G. Niemi & Jonathan D. Klingler
a
University of Rochester
Published online: 08 Mar 2012.

To cite this article: Richard G. Niemi & Jonathan D. Klingler (2012) The Development of Political
Attitudes and Behaviour Among Young Adults, Australian Journal of Political Science, 47:1, 31-54,
DOI: 10.1080/10361146.2011.643167

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 Australian Journal of Political Science,
Vol. 47, No. 1, March 2012, pp. 31–54

The Development of Political Attitudes and

Behaviour Among Young Adults
RICHARD G. NIEMI
University of Rochester

JONATHAN D. KLINGLER
University of Rochester
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With young adults frequently characterised by distrust, inefficacy and

disengagement from the political process, understanding how and when
youth develop attitudes and participatory habits is increasingly important.
With this in mind, the authors analyse nationwide surveys of American
youths aged 18–24 from 2006 and 2007 with the goal of uncovering
developmental patterns characteristic of this age. They find that political
participation, narrowly interpreted, changes surprisingly little across this
age range; community involvement, however, declines, more so among
students than nonstudents. Political trust and efficacy also decline, again
more among students than nonstudents. Disconcertingly, there was no
greater acceptance of diversity among older individuals, even those
attending university. Overall, the results indicate that late-adolescence
through early adulthood is a time of meaningful, patterned change in
people’s attitudes and behaviour. The authors conclude by discussing
potential policy solutions to address declining trust and efficacy during this
period of life.

Keywords: political disengagement; political efficacy; political participation;

political trust; US; youth

In contrast to the upbeat tone of the ‘third wave’ of democratisation in the

developing world, established democracies in the late 20th century were
characterised by declining political trust and increasing inefficacy and
disengagement from the political process (Blais 2007; Norris 1999; Putnam
2000). By the early years of the present century, declining trust and confidence

Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science at the University of
Rochester. Jonathan Klingler is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science at the
University of Rochester. His dissertation focuses on interest-group membership and presidential
grassroots lobbying organisations.

ISSN 1036-1146 print; ISSN 1363-030X online/12/010031-24 Ó 2012 Australian Political Studies Association
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10361146.2011.643167
 32 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

in political institutions, lower respect for authority and its responsiveness to

citizen concerns, and reduced political involvement were recognised as
worldwide phenomena (Dalton 2008; Dalton, McAllister and Wattenberg
2000; Inglehart 1990; Norris 1999; Wattenberg 2008).
The causes of this sweeping change are even now unclear, but in searching for
explanations, there has been a constant focus on the attitudes and behaviour of
young people. It is as if the socialisation process – the means whereby the ideas
and behavioural patterns of older generations are passed along to the newest
ones – has gone awry. The ensuring erosion of trust and participatory
behaviours in young people, with its suggestion of still further declines as
youths inexorably replace the elderly, makes this an especially challenging time
for supporters of democracy.
The widespread implication of changes in youths’ democratic support makes
the period in which young people develop their political attitudes and behaviour
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an especially important object of study. While the period from late-adolescence

through early adulthood has long been thought to be a time at which
individuals establish many of the social and political habits and feelings that
will guide them throughout their lives, researchers have yet to develop a
comprehensive understanding or mapping of developmental processes as they
relate to politics. In this paper we consider an array of political characteristics,
with the thought of identifying ways in which youthful ideas and actions are set
aside for adult versions.
American youth are an especially good population with which to explore
attitudinal and participatory development. Weakening ties to political parties
were apparent in the American population as early as the mid-1960s (Nie,
Verba and Petrocik 1976); growing distrust was identified there as early as the
1970s (Miller 1974), and concern over decreasing participation (in the form of
lower voter turnout) dates to about the same time (Brody 1978). American
youths may thus be something of a bellwether in terms of de-alignment,
alienation, and lack of engagement. Observation of their developmental
patterns in the present challenging times may thus help us understand the
patterns characterising youthful development broadly.
We begin by reviewing evidence about probable life-cycle patterns of
development. We then turn to new data that provide evidence about an
array of attitudes and behaviour. We find increases in certain types of
political behaviour, but declines in several others between ages 18–24; the
mixed pattern occurs despite contrasting evidence that consumption of
political information increases in important respects. Simultaneously, we find
significant declines in political trust. We also find weaker, but tantalising
evidence that change over the 18–24 age range varies between groups, often
in counterintuitive ways. University students, compared with nonstudents,
exhibit no significant increase in tolerance of diversity or in political
participation, undermining support for the argument that the university
experience enhances civic engagement. Furthermore, declines in trust, efficacy
and community service appear to be greater for students than nonstudents,
suggesting that higher education may actually reduce the differences between
students and nonstudents. In the conclusion, we briefly discuss policy
solutions that might address declining trust and efficacy by focusing on this
period of development.
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 33

Evidence about Life-cycle Change

Mid- to late-adolescence through early adulthood is thought to be when
individuals establish many of the habits, orientations, and feelings that guide
them throughout their lives. This has often been articulated, for example, with
respect to voter turnout (Plutzer 2002). A concurrent notion is that during the
same period individuals are characterised by instability and change, with
attitudes gradually settling into a more stable system of beliefs. Here research is
less in agreement. Researchers using both cross-sectional and panel studies have
found considerable support for this view with respect to party identification
(Alwin and Krosnick 1991; Jennings and Markus 1984) as well as for political
interest and knowledge and an array of attitudes (Jennings and Niemi 1981;
Neundorf, Smets and Garcı́a-Albacete 2011; Vollebergh, Iedema and Raau-
makers 2001). Others, however, have found no evidence that young adults show
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less attitudinal stability (Alwin and Krosnick 1991; Prior 2010). Based on
admittedly indirect measures, Hooghe and Wilkenfeld (2008, 166) concluded
that attitudes of generalised trust and ethnocentrism ‘stand out as potentially
stable attitudes across adolescent and adulthood’, suggesting that ‘political
attitudes are well developed by the age of 14’.
Studies of high school and university classes have also contributed a mixed
bag of results. That there is a strong bivariate relationship between educational
attainment and knowledge, participation and attitudes is beyond doubt. The
most obvious explanation is that those who remain in school learn while they
are there – either directly from classes they take or more indirectly such as
through increased exposure to the media and other information. While a few
studies have found a relationship between course-taking and political knowl-
edge or behaviour (Hillygus 2005; Niemi and Junn 1998; Smith and Niemi
2001), other studies raise serious questions about the significance of schooling
per se (Highton 2009; Luskin 1990). Thus, the extent to which students’
knowledge and behaviour change during their high school and university years
remains a matter of debate.
There are also studies that point directly to life-cycle patterns and that offer
supportive explanations for them. Best known are studies of the relationship
between age and voter turnout (for example, Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980)
and, to some extent, other political activities (Howe 2010, 24–7). In an
interesting twist, Watts (1999) used German youth studies to hypothesise ‘age-
invariant’ patterns for other kinds of political behaviour that are in some senses
the opposite of that for turnout. He finds a tendency toward direct action such
as participating in demonstrations that is highest among adolescents and
declines rapidly with age. Explanations for such patterns turn to characteristics
such as impulse control.
Also pointing directly to age-related changes are interviews with adolescents
between 11 and 18 reported by Adelson and O’Neil (1966, 304): ‘younger
subjects are more likely to approve of coercion in public affairs . . . [and] find
it hard to imagine that authority may be irrational, presumptuous, or
whimsical’ – also ‘with advancing age there is an increasing grasp of the nature
and needs of the community’ (304, original emphasis). They relate these changes
to developing cognitive capacities. Zukin et al. (2006, Chapter 3) also showed
patterns of ‘public engagement’ by age, with differences in the development of
 34 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

electoral and cognitive engagement (both increasing sharply during adulthood,

the latter from age 15 on), civic engagement (decreasing after adolescence, then
increasing for a time), and political ‘voice’ (relatively invariant across age).
Collectively, prior work suggests that there may be meaningful life-cycle
patterns in mid- to late-adolescence with respect to both participatory and
attitudinal characteristics. In addition to a mix of empirical findings, however,
recent studies pointing to significant erosions in political trust, efficacy and
engagement in the young suggest that there remain important weaknesses in our
knowledge of youth and politics.
Studying adolescence and early adulthood, however, has not been easy. Part
of the problem has been a lack of suitable data. This problem is now being
overcome, as concern over youthful attitudes has resulted in research that
focuses on the young (for example, Zukin et al. 2006). In this paper, we take
advantage of two online surveys from 2006 and 2007 that, when combined,
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include two thousand people between the ages of 18 and 24 and cover a range of
attitudes and behaviour. Despite likely over-representation of activists, they
provide a starting point for analysis and allow us to provide tentative support
for a number of hypotheses about early adulthood.
Our emphasis is on aggregate change, as the surveys are cross-sectional, as
opposed to panels. Apart from a few speculative comments, we do not attempt
to determine the causes of the patterns we uncover and we are all too aware of
the fragility of our findings even as pure description. Nonetheless, displaying a
wide array of age patterns representing both attitudes and behaviour serves as a
starting point for a more concentrated and thoughtful conversation about life-
cycle development in these challenging times.

The Surveys
The National Surveys of Political and Civic Engagement of Young People,
targeted at individuals aged 18–24, were conducted in the US in the autumn of
2006 and 2007 by Polimetrix, Inc. under contract with the Jonathan Tisch
College of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Tufts University. Each survey
consists of five hundred full-time university students and five hundred young
people not enrolled full-time in a university, resulting in a total sample of two
thousand respondents.1 Post-survey weights were computed to correct for
potential biases owing to certain demographics.2
The two cross-sectional samples were produced from email contacts with the
permanent Polling Point opt-in panel maintained by Polimetrix. Email
messages were sent to all people in the Polimetrix panel matched by gender,
race (white, black, Hispanic, other), and age (18–21, 22–24) against a frame of
records randomly selected from the US Census Bureau’s 2004 American

1
There are 923 males and 1077 females in the combined samples. Thus, for both ‘student/
nonstudent’ and ‘male/female’ groups, the number of cases at each age averages over 125, giving
us confidence in the separate estimates for these groups.
2
However, weights to correct for the over-sampling of college students relative to non-college
youths were introduced only for the second sample, thus yielding an overall sample biased toward
those with higher education. Of course, when we conduct separate analyses for students and
nonstudents, this is not a problem.
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 35

Community Survey;3 invitees were chosen based on the strength of match to the
frame and their expected response rate to the survey (Rivers 2007). Each invitee
was asked to visit a website maintained by Polimetrix that contained the
questionnaire. Initial screening questions were used to determine whether the
respondent qualified based on age and non-military status. Another question
was used to determine whether or not qualifying respondents were full-time
university students. Responses were accepted from qualified respondents until
the quotas of 500 questionnaires of each type were completed.
These web-based samples overestimate participation rates of the young
people involved (Niemi, Portney and King 2008), so we ignore absolute levels of
involvement. We do not believe that age interacts with reports of involvement
in ways that invalidate our conclusions about life-cycle patterns, though the
small size of other youth samples makes it almost impossible at this time to fully
validate this assumption.
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Results
Our primary focus is on the change, or lack thereof, that characterises young
people’s political attitudes and behaviour over the 18–24 year-old age span.
Identifying correlates of change provides important insight into likely causal
processes. Noting, for example, that university students display a different
pattern of development from nonstudents, or that men and women move in
different directions, suggests that university attendance, or gender, has
something to do with what we observe. We also repeated our primary analysis
(i.e. regressions of scale variables with age) with the inclusion of seven control
variables to be certain that the relationship between age and the scale variables
was robust, and indeed, in all but one case it remained similar or became
stronger. In the long run, more controls are needed, as are more theoretically
based arguments about developmental processes. Yet a good first step is
providing adequate descriptive information about changes over these crucial
years. What we have here represents a start toward completing that task.
We will work our way through a series of topics, beginning with a variety of
behaviours, then turning to consumption of political information, and finally to
politically relevant attitudes. Our objective is to obtain preliminary findings on
the presence of relationships between age and these variables of interest. Our
strategy is first to calculate bivariate regression coefficients, where the lone
independent variable is age. Since in general we do not expect large-scale
changes over any seven-year age span, we will look for consistency of patterns
across similar measures as well as for changes that are individually statistically
significant. Throughout, we use ordinary least squares, assuming that any
curvilinear patterns are sufficiently straight over this six-year time span that the
assumption of linearity is not too much of a distortion.4
We also present separate regressions within student and gender subsets of the
sample in order to identify within-subset age effects. In doing so, we exercise

3
Available from http://www.census.gov/acs/www/.
4
As expected, the goodness of fit of the linear model (i.e., the correlation between age and the
dependent variable) is low, typically no more than .10. However, repeating our analyses using
dummy variables for each age revealed no evidence of meaningful nonlinear relationships.
 36 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

considerable caution. Testing for the presence of significantly different

developmental patterns across groups is most appropriately done by use of a
dummy variable accounting for age and group membership. We in fact utilised
this method and comment on significant differences when they occur, but for
ease of interpretation we show the separate regressions.5 Throughout, we
combine individual items into scales using principal components factor analysis
to assess the appropriateness (fit) of specific items and then construct scales
using a weighted average of variables that have factor loadings greater or equal
to .50, with the factor loadings as weights.6

Political and Related Participation

When we think of the life cycle and political participation, what usually comes
to mind is voter turnout, or in Australia voter enrolment. Low levels of voting
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among late-adolescents, which give way to steady increases over the next 20
years, suggest that we might find increases in other kinds of political behaviour
as well. Yet the rare systematic evidence in Watts (1999) contradicts that
expectation. It is the latter results that largely carry the day when we examine
more than a dozen different behaviours here (Table 1, column 1). There are,
admittedly, some statistically significant gains. Boycotting and ‘buycotting’
(purposely buying or avoiding buying products or services for political
reasons), for example, showed modest but significant increases by age. But
there are also significant declines – in wearing political buttons and in the non-
political activity of raising money for charitable organisations – along with a
number of nonsignificant results. Not surprisingly, then, when we combine all
of the political activities, the coefficient representing the participant gradient by
age is small and nonsignificant (Table 1, top row).
When we examine students and nonstudents separately, however, the
patterns are more consistent. A priori one might imagine that students become
more participatory during their young adult years, creating or reinforcing cross-
sectional results showing that more educated respondents participate more
frequently. Yet knowing that differences in participation are apparent while
students are still in high school (Jennings and Niemi 1981), we might anticipate
similar changes among the two groups. As it happens, university students show
very little evidence of participation growth. Increases barely outnumber
decreases, and few of the changes are significant, and one of these is negative
(Table 1, col. 2). Nonstudents almost uniformly show positive gains, with the
majority of them statistically significant; only one form of participation records
a decline. It needs to be noted, however, that the differences between the two
groups are typically not statistically significant.
When viewing the 11-item scale, nonstudents show a significant gain, while
students show no significant movement. The amount of change by nonstudents
appears modest, but it amounts to an increase of more than one full activity
over the course of six years. This is enough to erase the difference in absolute

5
An additional complication is that some of the nonstudents may have attended or even
graduated from college. Ideally our comparison group would be nonstudents who had attended
college little or not at all.
6
For the complete wording of items and the details of the factor analysis, see Appendix I.
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 37
Table 1. Changes in Political Participation by Age
All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Political participation 0.088 0.071 0.190* 70.003 0.118*

scale (11 items)
Buycotted products 0.034* 0.062* 0.042* 0.029* 0.033*
or services
Boycotted products 0.029* 0.032* 0.034* 0.031* 0.025*
Contact public official 0.029* 0.029* 0.044* 0.007 0.040*
Contributed money 0.022* 0.010 0.034* 0.006 0.029*
to a party, candidate
Signed a petition 0.014 0.017 0.025* 70.001 0.024
Contact paper 0.007 0.004 0.014 0.001 0.007
Participated in a 0.003 70.008 0.020* 0.002 0.001
protest, demonstration
Attended meeting 0.003 0.004 0.014 70.009 0.011
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Online political discussion 70.002 70.005 0.026 70.032 0.001

Worked in a political campaign 70.000 70.003 0.024 70.019 0.010
Wore button, 70.025* 70.024 70.016 70.040* 70.015
T-shirt, sticker on car
Additional participation items
Donated money to a 0.012 70.002 0.024* 0.001 0.026*
community organisation
Raised money for charity 70.023* 70.043* 0.003 70.031 70.015
Promoted involvement, 0.002 70.005 0.023* 70.030 0.026*
voter registration

Note: Entries are OLS bivariate regression coefficients with age as the independent variable.
Positive coefficients indicate increasing political participation. Average Ns (in all tables) are
approximately 1,950 for all respondents and 900–1050 for the four sub-groups.
*p  .05.

levels of activity between 18-year-old students and nonstudents (see Appendix

II, Table A1), and it runs counter to any notion that university attendance
impels students to partake of political activities.7 Of course, part of the
explanation may be that students are in an unusual social position – somewhat
isolated from the communities from which they came as well as from those that
they will later join. Nonstudents may get a bit of a head start in this respect, and
perhaps students will have a spurt of involvement when they get out of school
and settle into communities. Be that as it may, while they are in university it
appears as if young people do not increase their participation rates and, at least
temporarily, lose some of their advantage over those not in this institutional
setting.
There is also a noteworthy difference between young men and women.
Despite changes in gender roles in the last generation, in which females have
become the majority on American university campuses, increasingly value
career advancement, and in some instances have even begun out-earning their
male counterparts, it is still the case that men are typically more engaged in

7
This of course raises the question of why university students participate more at age 18 than
non-university students. This may be due to the emphasis on community involvement in
American university admissions processes.
 38 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

politics than women.8 That is generally true of the young men and women in the
Tufts surveys. Yet when it comes to changes over the 18–24 age range, it is
women who more often show positive gains (Table 1, cols 4–5). Only three of
the political activities show significant changes for young men, and one of those
is a decline, whereas almost all estimates for women are positive, as are all the
significant changes. We should not overestimate this pattern, as the changes
among women on the individual items are often small. Nonetheless, the
evidence suggests that women change in ways that close some of the gap that
exists at the end of adolescence.
Efforts at political persuasion show a similar pattern to those already
discussed. This action, which has a parallel in adult surveys (Dalton 2009, 63),
refers to helping promote political involvement or assisting with voter
registration. For the youthful respondents as a whole, there is no significant
change over the 18–24-year age span (Table 1, bottom row). Both nonstudents
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and women, however, showed a significant growth in promoting participation,

while students and men showed essentially no change. The coefficients for men
and women for promoting participation were significantly different, with
women demonstrating a stronger relationship between age and their promotion
of participation.
Overall, we find that while a few forms of political participation, such as
boycotting/buycotting, and contacting public officials, modestly increase
among young people as they age, the dominant finding is that of continuity
rather than change. We find no evidence to suggest that students increase their
participation rates over nonstudents while they are attending university; if
anything, nonstudents at least temporarily close the gap between themselves
and students. Finally, in at least the area of promoting participation in others,
women increased their rates of participation as they aged, while men declined.
In light of the current environment of political disinterest, it is noteworthy
that the university experience does not socialise students to adopt higher levels
of political participation than that exhibited by their peers not in school.
University students begin early adulthood with higher levels of participation
than non-university students, but their participation is not enhanced while they
are at university. This is surprising and carries with it negative implications for
the future of democratic participation among the best-educated stratum of
society.

Community Service Participation

Voluntary community service represents a relatively new kind of involvement
among young people, one that has grown in frequency over the past couple of
decades (Wattenberg 2008, 78). Yet there is concern that some fraction of this
surge in voluntarism is largely résumé-padding associated with a desire to get
into better universities (Wattenberg 2008, 79–80) as well as a response to
requirements for community service on the part of high schools. Thus, one

8
An exception is voter turnout, where women outpace men. For data on young people, see
Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (2010). For data on
college students that include controls for other presumably causal factors, see Niemi and
Hanmer (2010).
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 39

might expect that this form of participation would decline as youths move into
university and jobs.9
There is some suggestion in our data that this is the case (Table 2). Most
of the coefficients showing the relationship of age to community service,
both individual forms of community service and a scale combining them, are
negative, and a number of them are statistically significant. Respondents
themselves describe their volunteering as having declined – that self-
assessment being largest (and significant) for university students. A
tantalising result is that the decline in community service was significant
(though still small) for ideological liberals and conservatives but (non-
significantly) positive for moderates (not shown). This might be worthy of
further investigation.
A further interesting result is that students demonstrate a significantly
stronger decline in community service per se as they age than nonstudents.
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(i.e., on the second of the individual items in Table 2). When dummy
interaction terms are included in the regression, students have a significantly
stronger negative relationship between age and both self-described commu-
nity involvement and their frequency of community service.
In short, self-described community involvement and rates of volunteering
decline during the 18–24-year age range. Furthermore, the initial advantage in
community service participation rates held by students over their nonstudent
peers at the age of 18 appears to evaporate by the age of 24.

Political Discussion
Discussion of politics and social issues represents another kind of political
involvement, one that indicates a degree of political interest though not
necessarily overt activism. One might well have conflicting expectations here.
As young people move into adult work, or into university, one might think
they would talk more about politics because they would begin to see
the importance of it to their own lives and to society as a whole. But one of
our measures is about talking with parents, and it is easy to imagine a
decline in these discussions simply because many youths move out of their
parents’ households, at least for part of the year in the case of university
students.
Our results do not confirm the expectation that discussions with parents
decline as students get older. The coefficients representing these discussions are
all negative, and they are significant with the exception of university students
(Table 3). When we include controls for appropriate demographic character-
istics however, the relationship between age and political discussion becomes
insignificant.

Consumption of Political Information

As with politically tinged discussions, one might expect that consumption of
information about politics would increase in young adulthood. In an earlier era,
9
Howe (2010, 28) showed a decline in volunteering among Canadians aged 15–19 and those aged
20–29.
 40 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

Table 2. Changes in Community Service by Age

All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Community service 70.156* 70.176* 70.015 70.176* 70.151*

activity scale (7 items)
Self-described 70.048* 70.063* 70.007 70.059* 70.041*
community involvement
Participated in community service 70.087* 70.106* 70.036 70.084* 70.092*
Volunteered via a 70.041* 70.041 70.015 70.034 70.047*
social/non-profit org.
Raised awareness 0.006 0.006 0.020 0.007 0.001
about an issue
Attended off-campus 0.004 0.005 0.016 70.002 0.007
issue seminar
Attended on-campus 70.032* 70.019 0.002 70.047* 70.023*
issue speaker
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Organised effort to address 70.012 70.021 0.005 70.025* 70.001

environmental issues

Note: Positive coefficients indicate increasing community service participation.

*p  .05.

Table 3. Changes in Political Discussions by Age

All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Political discussion scale (2 items) 70.043* 70.015 70.027 70.062* 70.044

Discuss politics with friends 70.006 0.003 0.018 70.020 70.008
Discuss politics with parents 70.042* 70.018 70.049* 70.051* 70.040*

Note: Positive coefficients indicate increasing political discussion.

*p  .05.

this might have been complicated by the movement of young people out of their
parents’ homes and into environments without easy access to newspapers and
television. In today’s environment, of course, there are multiple sources of
information. Even if youths have less easy access to newspapers and possibly
television than they did while in high school and living at home, they might well
consume more information from online sources.
The results suggest some real gains to information-gathering, but not
indiscriminately (Table 4). Newspaper readership neither increases nor
decreases. Following the news on television, in contrast, increases overall as
well as among our four groups (though not always significantly). Online news
consumption increases at an even greater rate and significantly among each of
the groups we have been considering. Putting these and other measures together
in a scale shows that following the news in the media increases substantially and
widely.
Perhaps noteworthy, however, is that despite the overall increase in
information consumption, gathering political information from blogs does
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 41
Table 4. Changes in Information Consumption by Age
All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Political information 0.139* 0.154* 0.167* 0.105* 0.131*

scale (6 items)
Read a newspaper 0.007 0.015 0.026 70.013 0.018
Watch the news on TV 0.047* 0.063* 0.027 0.034 0.055*
Read the news online 0.060* 0.055* 0.094* 0.036* 0.067*
Listen to the news on the radio 0.070* 0.073* 0.060* 0.086* 0.049*
Read blogs about political issues 0.022 0.022 0.032* 0.015 0.013
Read blogs or campaign websites 0.002 0.000 0.011 70.009 0.002

Note: Positive coefficients indicate increasing information consumption.

*p  .05.
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not increase. It may be that this is simply too new a method of communication
for it to have been registered adequately in 2006 and 2007. In any case, there is
no evidence here that young adults are shifting strongly to this particular source
of information. Youths are online, as evidenced by the increase in reading the
news online, but they are not switching quickly to blogs during the 18–24 year-
old period.

Diversity
A particularly interesting question is whether young people alter their attitudes
about diversity. Though it may be only wishful thinking, one would like to
suppose that university students, in particular, become more interested in and
tolerant of different cultures, persons, and experiences. The generally left-of-
centre leanings of university faculty might be expected to prompt such changes.
To test this notion, we asked several questions to tap these sorts of attitudes as
well as two questions about the respondents’ behaviour as it relates to contacts
with persons beyond their normal groups.
Somewhat surprisingly, attitudes related to diversity changed little with age
(Table 5). On most of the diversity attitudes, including the composite scale,
change was small and statistically insignificant. However, the belief that
diversity strengthens groups and a sense that it is not difficult to relate to
individuals of other races increased modestly with age.
Contrary to the idea that university students develop a greater appreciation
of diversity, students show no significant change in their attitudes. All but one
of the indicators are in the ‘right’ direction, but none are statistically significant.
This is largely true as well for nonstudents and for both men and women. Given
contemporary population migrations and the consequently greater hetero-
geneity of the citizenry in countries around the world, this may be a particularly
disturbing result.

Political Trust and Efficacy

The way young people think about government might be especially prone to
change during early adulthood. As teenagers studying government in a
 42 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

classroom setting (and largely in the abstract) turn into consumers of day-to-
day political news, their trust in government might decline rapidly. Past
research, though not definitive, is also suggestive of a decline in trust after high
school (Jennings and Niemi 1981). Quite apart from politics, teenagers can be a
critical lot, and they may transfer some of their distrust of parents and older
people in general to government and politics. Altogether, there is good reason
to expect trust in young adults to decline.
In fact, the direction of change was uniformly downward and was statistically
significant on the bulk of the individual measures as well as on the overall scale
(Table 6). Young people at 24 were clearly less trusting of government than they
had been at 18. Moreover, trust declined among students and nonstudents alike
and among males and females. Students experienced a stronger decline in their
trust in Congress than nonstudents, but the difference between the groups is not
significant on other trust-related attitudes.
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One cautionary note comes from thinking about the time at which the
surveys were completed. In the middle of the decade, cynicism about the Bush
administration and the war in Iraq had grown considerably (see, for example,
Jacobson 2008), and the observed changes might have been affected by this
development. If this were the case, however, one wonders why trust was down
among all the groups we looked at and why it was not down more or less
equally among all age levels (as is common with so-called period effects). Still,
the possibility exists that this result is a consequence of a particular time period
and is not a general life-cycle phenomenon.
Unfortunately, the survey contains only a single question measuring political
efficacy. Interestingly, efficacy scores on this measure increased with age overall.
Students also experienced a significantly stronger increase in political efficacy as
they aged in comparison with nonstudents. If this result is generalisable, it
means that students were feeling more positive about their ability to influence

Table 5. Changes in Attitudes about Diversity by Age

All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Political diversity 0.058 0.058 0.104* 0.039 0.080

scale (7 items)
Diverse backgrounds 0.038* 0.021 0.055* 0.032 0.040*
hinder groups
I prefer people who 0.014 0.012 0.023 0.018 0.011
are similar to me
It’s difficult to relate 0.026* 0.030 0.029 0.012 0.039*
to different races
Enjoy different people 0.017 0.025 0.028* 0.010 0.023
Diversity more interesting 0.013 0.015 0.023 0.010 0.022
Don’t spend time 70.016 70.019 70.001 70.028 70.005
with non-friends
Seek relationships with 70.006 0.010 70.003 70.001 70.007
dissimilar people

Note: Positive coefficients mean respondents were more open to or appreciative of diversity.
*p  .05.
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 43
Table 6. Changes in Political Trust and Political Efficacy by Age
All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Political trust scale (5 items) 70.129* 70.141* 70.122* 70.092* 70.153*

Congress loses touch 70.041* 70.054* 70.030* 70.035* 70.043*
People solve problems 70.033* 70.056* 70.018 70.026 70.036*
Government does not waste money 70.061* 70.061* 70.064* 70.037* 70.077*
Candidates know what they do 70.018 70.016 70.016* 70.009 70.026
Hardly anyone is crooked 70.031* 70.019 70.044* 70.026 70.035*
Efficacy: Public officials 0.033* 0.059* 0.010 0.027 0.037*
don’t care what people
like me think

Note: Positive coefficients indicate increasing trust or increasing efficacy.

*p  .05.
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government while at the same time becoming less trusting of what government
is like.

Importance of Political Participation

An assumption in much of the literature on civic education is that government
and civics classes inculcate in students a sense that political participation is
valuable because of the goals that can be achieved. Furthermore, higher levels
of education in general could provide students with the opportunity to see
political activity translate into social change. With respect to the population as
a whole, as individuals age and participate more in politics, they may develop
favourable attitudes about participation in order to justify their own
involvement.
The Tufts survey asked respondents nine different questions about the value
or outcomes of political participation. Somewhat surprisingly, the results for
these questions challenge the belief that individuals value political participation
more as they age. The coefficients were statistically insignificant for all items;
the same was true for the overall scale (results not shown). This held for all
groups analysed, suggesting that there is no meaningful change in the way
individuals value participation as they age. The absence of growth in actual
participation, noted above, may be a consequence of youths’ unchanging
feelings about the value of political engagement. In turn, unchanging views of
the value of participation, even among students, suggest that efforts to stimulate
greater involvement will face an indifferent or even hostile audience.

Attitudes about Community Service

We noted earlier that levels of volunteering drop off significantly as students
leave high school and move on to university or the workforce. It would be
reasonable to speculate that the observed declines in community service are
associated with declines in the value individuals place in community service
after they leave high school. Yet this is not the case. In contrast to our findings
on the value of political participation, Table 7 illustrates that the value
 44 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

individuals place on service increases with age in a few areas (though most of
the coefficients are not significant). Overall, older individuals expressed a
stronger belief that participating in community service provides a way to
interact, or network, with important professionals. This suggests that over time,
as individuals enter the workforce, they may increasingly view community
service as an opportunity to make contacts to further their careers. On this one
attitude, such a development may be greater among university students and
males.

Individual versus Societal Responsibility

A number of questions asked respondents who bears responsibility for poverty
and other social problems – focusing especially on how much individuals bear
responsibility for their own fates. In going from age 18 and 24, respondents
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allocated more responsibility to society (Table 8). Nonstudents and females, in

particular, increasingly adopted beliefs that attribute responsibility for social
problems to society at large. This result is perhaps related to what psychologists
have called the fundamental attribution error or sometimes the correspondence
bias (Michener, DeLamater and Myers 2004). Individuals are said to make this
kind of error when they attribute a person’s condition to that person’s
disposition or actions when the condition was in fact brought about by factors
outside the individual’s control. Importantly, at least one recent study has
found that young adults more often make attribution mistakes than middle-
aged adults (Follett and Hess 2002). What we may be observing here is the

Table 7. Changes in Community Service Attitudes by Age

All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Community service attitudes scale 0.053 0.151 0.093 0.085 0.023

(8 items)
Will find relevant service 0.003 0.013 0.018 0.007 0.001
opportunities
Confident can further social justice 70.003 70.008 0.013 70.001 70.005
through service
Confident can make a difference in 0.011 0.022 0.021 0.020 0.001
community through service
Confident can help individuals in 0.001 0.009 0.011 70.010 0.011
need through service
Confident will be able to effectively 0.023* 0.053* 0.019 0.031* 0.015
interact with professionals through
service
Confident can help in promoting 0.000 0.012 0.005 0.020 70.016
equal opportunity through service
Can apply knowledge in ways that 0.017 0.027 0.022 0.023 0.011
solve real-life problems through
service
Will effectively participate in service 0.011 0.041* 0.011 0.018 0.009
activities in the future

Note: Positive coefficients indicate respondents place more value on community service.
*p  .05.
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 45
Table 8. Changes in Individual versus Societal Responsibility by Age
All University
Item Respondents Students Nonstudents Males Females

Individual responsibility scale (6 items) 70.076 70.046 70.153* 70.036 70.127*

People are poor despite opportunities 70.035* 70.034 70.054* 70.014 70.055*
Poor people choose to be poor 70.026* 70.015 70.047* 70.031 70.027
Individuals responsible for 70.005 0.009 70.024 0.008 70.026
misfortunes
An individual’s problems can be 70.006 0.020 70.019 0.017 70.010
assessed within the individual
Public policy must be changed for 70.019 0.024 0.026 0.006 0.030*
problems to be solved
We need reforms within the system to 0.026* 0.026 0.037* 0.026 0.026
change communities

Note: Positive coefficients indicate respondents are more likely to assign individual rather than
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societal responsibility.
*p  .05.

beginning of a change in how people of different ages view individual

responsibility, gradually reducing assumptions of individual responsibility and
increasing the role of societal factors.10
Note how this change interacts with changes in political trust and attitudes
about political participation. If the age trends we observed are generalisable, it
means that as young people mature they become more likely to think that social
changes are necessary for solving poverty and individual misfortunes but are
less likely to trust the government to take the right steps and no more likely to
think their own participation will change things. Even as individuals attribute
more responsibility to society, they lack confidence in the ability of government
to solve problems, even with their own involvement. Again, this suggests how
difficult it may be to change young people’s perspectives on the returns from
democratic governance.

Conclusion
The years of adolescence and early adulthood are widely considered to be a
formative period in the lives of most citizens. This period is key to the
development of attitudes, skills, and behaviour that citizens will carry with them
throughout their lives. Yet, in spite of worrying signs about participation,
efficacy and trust throughout advanced industrial democracies, examination of
the teenage and early adult years is still a somewhat marginal enterprise. We
have sought to provide insights about this critical age by examining a broad
array of political attitudes and behaviours. By considering changes among
students and nonstudents, we have also tried to suggest ways in which

10
We are not asserting that attributing responsibility to individuals is necessarily an erroneous
view, only that people may less often assign individual responsibility as they age owing to general
changes in the way they view what is under the control of individuals.
 46 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

future expansion of university enrolment may influence patterns in the years to

come.
Apart from the well-known increase in voter turnout between early and later
adulthood, life-cycle changes have not been a prominent part of writings about
political socialisation. The findings here, however, suggest the possibility of
significant patterns of development in adolescence and early adulthood.
Individual roles and responsibilities, especially as they relate to authority, are
prominent among the possible developments. Young adults increase their rates
of certain expression-related political behaviours, while their participation in
community service declines with age. We also find that while young adults
increase their consumption of political information, paying more attention both
to some forms of traditional media as well as new media, at the same time, of
course, they have fewer political discussions with their parents. They appear to
develop a greater sense of political efficacy, but their trust in government
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declines dramatically as they age. There is virtually no change ascribed to the

value of diversity – a disconcerting result – while there is an increase in the
amount of responsibility attributed to society rather than individuals. There is
no significant change in the perceived value of political participation and little
change in the perceived value of community service.
These results, tentative as they are, suggest a number of patterns that deserve
further investigation. There seems to be a general shift away from trust in
government institutions but also from volunteering for charitable organisa-
tions. With the exception of trust, attitudes seem to change less over time than
many kinds of behaviour. While this period of life is associated with a dramatic
reduction in trust in government, among students there is a countervailing
increase in feelings of political efficacy.
Scholars and policy makers concerned about declining political trust and
efficacy may be able to address these concerns by focusing on changes during
the 18–24 year-old period. Insofar as such efforts involve higher education,
however, a difficulty is that the effects observed here move in opposite
directions. Expanding access of young people to a university education
would appear to increase their perceptions of efficacy by the time they are in
their mid–20s. Yet these gains are more than matched by a decline in
political trust. Moreover, we as a discipline have not developed ways of
enhancing people’s trust in the way scholars have attempted to develop pre-
university course work aimed at stimulating political tolerance (Avery and
Hoffman 1993) and efficacy (e.g., the Center for Civic Education’s Project
Citizen curriculum). Thus, we may have to look to the political world in the
hope that governments and governmental leaders act in ways that help
reverse decades-long declines in trust. This is a tall order, to be sure, but
there may be no other way.
Our findings also suggest that the time that young people spend in university
appears to have few normatively positive effects on their attitudes and political
behaviours. While university students leave high school with higher levels of
political participation and community service than their nonstudent peers, this
gap tends to dissipate by the age of 24. Furthermore, university students do not
develop relatively higher levels of many civic attitudes as they age, as we might
have expected. Finally, we found that men and women experience different
effects of age in a few ways during the 18–24 age range, as there is some
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 47

evidence that women narrow the political participation gap with men during
this period.
We are aware of the limitations of our data, especially that they are from only
one time period. A single cross-section (or two closely spaced ones, as here)
does not allow us definitively to distinguish between age differences that are a
result of life-cycle effects and those that are a result of generational effects.
Nevertheless, a number of our results are in line with the findings of previous
scholars, or can be more reasonably explained through life-cycle explanations
than through generational explanations. For example, the decline in trust in
government and increase in individualistic forms of participation over time in
late-adolescence and early adulthood appear to be consistent with Adelson and
O’Neil’s (1966) argument that young people trust authority less as they age and
both articulate and act on stronger individual beliefs. Also, one of our strongest
findings is that community service declines after the age at which most students
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leave high school, a result that can be easily explained given the incentives for
such behaviour in high school and the lack of such incentives after graduation.
Our findings lay the groundwork for future research by showing preliminary
support for an array of meaningful, patterned phenomena that appear to be the
result of life-cycle effects during the 18–24-year age range. Other work points to
adolescence, in particular, as a key period in the development of political
attitudes and behaviours. Future scholarship would benefit by considering the
12–24-year age range as a whole, or perhaps the 15–24-year age range, in order
to better understand development of and sources of political attitudes and
behaviour.

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Appendix I Question Wording and Scale Construction

Throughout the Tufts survey an effort was made to measure each concept with
multiple items. In creating scales, we used principal components factor analysis
to assess the appropriateness (fit) of specific items. Scales were constructed
using a weighted average of variables that have factor loadings greater than or
equal to .50, using the factor loadings as weights. In one case, the scale
measuring attitudes on trust, the signs of the weights were reversed to ensure
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 49

that scale values increase with increasing levels of trust. Question wordings are
contained in the tables showing the results of the factor analysis.

Table A1. Political Participation & Community Service Activities

Factor
Variable Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading

Political Participation
Worked in a political campaign
Participated in a protest,
demonstration
Online political discussion
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Worked or volunteered for a political 0.70
campaign (wsb88_polcampgn)
Participated in a protest, march or 0.64
demonstration (wsb88_protestmarch)
Participated in online political discussions or 0.60
visited a politically oriented website
(wsb88_polwebsite)

Contact public official
Contact paper
Attended meeting
Wore button, T-shirt, car
sticker
Contributed money to a party,
candidate
Signed a petition
Boycotted products
Buycotted products or services
1st dimension var. explained: 40%; Cronbach’s alpha: .84
Community Service Activities
Participated in community
service
Volunteered via a social/non-
profit org.
Self-described community
involvement
Raised awareness about an
issue
Attended off-campus issue
seminar
Attended on-campus issue
speaker
Organised effort to address
env. issues
1st dimension var. explained: 48%; Cronbach’s alpha: .81
Contacted or visited a public official (at any 0.74
level of government) to ask for assistance or
to express my opinion (wsb88_cntpuboff)
Contacted a newspaper, magazine, radio or 0.67
television program to express my opinion on
an issue or candidate (wsb88_cntnewsp)
Attended a meeting of town or city council, 0.64
school board or neighbourhood association
(wsb88_attndtown)
Wore a button, put a sticker on my car or 0.66
placed a sign in front of my house in support
of an issue or candidate (wsb89_button)
Contributed money to a candidate, political 0.64
party or any organisation that supported
candidates (wsb89_contribmon)
Signed a petition (paper or email) about a 0.62
political or social issue (wsb89_signedpet)
Not bought something because of the 0.57
conditions under which the product is made
(wsb89_notbought)
Bought a certain product or service because I 0.61
like the social or political values of the
company that produced it (wsb89_bought)
How would you describe your level of 0.69
community involvement? (wsb103)
Participated in community service 0.72
(wsb88_partcomm)
Volunteered through a social or non-profit 0.73
organisation (wsb88_volnonprof)
Helped to raise awareness around a particular 0.71
social issue (wsb88_raiseaware)
Attended an off-campus civic issue related 0.64
conference or seminar (wsb88_offcampissue)
Attended an on-campus speaker on a 0.72
particular issue (wsb88_oncampskr)
Helped to organise efforts aimed at solving 0.63
environmental issues (wsb88_orgenviro)
 50 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

Table A2. Political Discussion & Consumption of Political Information

Factor
Variable Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading

Political Discussion
Discuss politics with friends
Discuss politics with parents
1st dimension variance explained: 79%; Cronbach’s alpha: .73
Political Information
Read a newspaper
Watch the news on TV
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How often do you discuss politics or social 0.89
issues with your friends?
(wsb157_discusspol)
How often do you talk with one or both of 0.89
your parents about politics or social issues?
(wsb157_talkparents)
How often do you read a newspaper? 0.60
(wsb157_newspaper)
How often do you watch the news on TV? 0.50

Read the news online
Listen to the news on the radio
Read blogs about political
issues
Read campaign blogs or
websites
1st dimension variance explained: 43%; Cronbach’s alpha: .72
(wsb157_watchtvn)
How often do you read the news online? 0.70
(wsb157_readonline)
How often do you listen to the news on the 0.56
radio? (wsb157_listenradio)
How often do you personally read ‘blogs’ on 0.77
the Internet that deal with political issues?
(wsb157_netblogs)
How often do you personally read ‘blogs’ or 0.74
campaign websites or candidates for office?
(wsb157_campblogs)
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 51
Table A3. Attitudes on Diversity and Trust
Factor
Variable Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading

Diversity
Diverse backgrounds hinder
groups (disagree)
I prefer people who are similar
to me (disagree)
It’s difficult to relate to
different races (disagree)
Enjoy different people (agree)
Diversity more interesting
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It is hard for a group to function effectively 0.65
when the people involved come from very
diverse backgrounds (wsb18_diverse)
I prefer the company of people who are very 0.67
similar to me in background and expressions
(wsb18_similar)
I find it difficult to relate to people from a 0.73
different race or culture (wsb18_difrace)
I enjoy meeting people who come from 70.72
backgrounds very different from my own
(wsb18_meetdiff)
Cultural diversity within a group makes the 70.67

(agree) group more interesting and effective

Don’t spend time with non-
friends (disagree)
Seek relationships with
dissimilar people (agree)
1st dimension var. explained: 42%; Cronbach’s alpha: .76
Political Trust
Congress loses touch
People solve problems
Government does not waste
money
Candidates know what they do
Hardly anyone is crooked
1st dimension var. explained: 47%; Cronbach’s alpha: .71
(wsb18_inter)
I don’t spend much time with people outside 0.54
my immediate circle of friends
(wsb18_circle)
I actively seek out and maintain relationships 70.51
with individuals very different from me
(wsb18_diffrel)
Those we elect to Congress lose touch with the 0.68
people pretty quickly (wsb205_congress)
In general, people getting together in their own 0.54
communities can solved their problems
better than the government in Washington
(wsb205_gvmt)
The people in government do not waste the 70.74
money we pay in taxes
(wsb205_wastemoney)
Most of the people running for office are smart 70.68
people who know what they are doing
(wsb205_smart)
Hardly any of the people running government 70.76
are crooked (wsb205_crooked)

Note: Responses were scored so that positive coefficients mean respondents were more open to or
appreciative of diversity. For trust, positive coefficients indicate higher trust.
 52 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER
Table A4. Attitudes on Community Service and Political Participation
Variable
Community Service Attitudes
Will find relevant service
opportunities
Confident can further justice
through service
Confident can make a
difference in community
through service
Confident can help individuals
in need through service
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Confident will be able to
effectively interact with
professionals through
service
Confident can promote equal
opportunity through service
Can solve ‘real-life’ problems
through service
Will participate in service
activities in the future
1st dimension variance explained: 69%; Cronbach’s alpha: .93
Political Activity Attitudes
Will make meaningful
contribution if choose to
participate in political
activities
Will find relevant political
activities
Confident can further justice
through political activities
Confident can make a
difference in community
through political activities
Confident will be able to
effectively interact with
professionals through
political activities
Confident can promote equal
opportunity through
political activities
Can solve ‘real-life’ problems
through political activities
Factor
Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading
In the future, I will be able to find community 0.81
service opportunities which are relevant to
my interests and needs (wsb6_relevant)
I am confident that, through community 0.81
service, I can help in promoting social justice
(wsb6_justice)
I am confident that, through community 0.84
service, I can make a difference in my
community (wsb6_difference)
I am confident that I can help individuals in 0.83
need by participating in community service
activities (wsb6_help)
I am confident that, in future community 0.84
service activities, I will be able to interact
with relevant professionals in ways that are
meaningful and effective (wsb6_prof)
I am confident that, through community 0.82
service, I can help in promoting equal
opportunity for citizens (wsb6_equal)
Through community service, I can apply 0.85
knowledge in ways that solve ‘real-life’
problems (wsb6_reallife)
I am confident that I will effectively participate 0.81
in community service activities in the future
(wsb6_partic).
If I choose to participate in political activities 0.86
in the future, I will be able to make a
meaningful contribution (wsb15_meaning)
In the future, I will be able to find political 0.84
activities which are relevant to my interests
and needs (wsb15_relevant)
I am confident that, through political activities, 0.86
I can help in promoting social justice
(wsb15_justice)
I am confident that, through political activities, 0.89
I can make a difference (wsb15_differ)
I am confident that, in future political 0.86
activities, I will be able to interact with
relevant professionals in ways that are
meaningful and effective (wsb16_prof)
I am confident that, through political activities, 0.86
I can help in promoting equal opportunity
for citizens (wsb16_equal)
Through political activities, I can apply 0.87
knowledge in ways that solve ‘real life’
problems (wsb16_know)
(continued )
 POLITICAL ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIOUR AMONG YOUNG ADULTS 53
Table A4. (Continued )
Factor
Variable Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading

Can help people help By participating in political activities, I can 0.82

themselves through political help people to help themselves (wsb16_help)
activities
Will participate in political I am confident that I will participate in political 0.80
activities in the future activities in the future (wsb16_future)
1st dimension variance explained: 73%; Cronbach’s alpha: .95

Note: For all of the variables in these scales, greater disagreement with the survey statement is
coded as a higher value than agreement. Thus, the resulting scales increase as the respondent
values community service or political activity less.
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Table A5. Attitudes on Individual Responsibility

Factor
Variable Question Wording (Survey Question Number) Loading

Individual Responsibility
People are poor despite
opportunities
Poor people choose to be poor
Individuals responsible for
misfortunes
An individual’s problems can
be assessed within the
individual
Public policy must be changed
for problems to be solved
We need reforms within the
system to change
communities
1st dimension variance explained: 52%; Cronbach’s alpha: .81
I don’t understand why some people are poor 0.75
when there are boundless opportunities
available to them (wsb33_poor)
People are poor because they choose to be poor 0.81
(wsb33_choose)
Individuals are responsible for their own 0.71
misfortunes (wsb33_misfort)
We need to look no further than the individual 0.73
in assessing his or her problems
(wsb33_indiv)
In order for problems to be solved, we need to 70.63
change public policy (wsb33_policy)
We need to institute reforms within the current 70.65
system to change our communities
(wsb33_reform)

Note: The result of a weighted average of these variables is a scale in which the higher the scale
value, the more the respondent attributes an individual’s conditions to the individual rather than
to society or circumstances.
 54 R.G. NIEMI AND J.D. KLINGLER

Appendix II. Scale Values at Ages 18 and 24

Table A6. Mean Scale Values at Ages 18 and 24 for Students and Nonstudents
Students Nonstudents

Scale 18 Years 24 Years 18 Years 24 Years

Political participation 11.34 11.20 10.36 11.10

Community service 8.89 7.55 7.62 6.97
Political discussions 4.29 4.23 4.18 3.83
Information consumption 8.56 9.21 8.24 9.00
Diversity 3.80 3.98 3.29 3.63
Political trust 4.16 5.27 3.93 4.79
Political participation attitudes 11.18 11.71 11.51 12.46
Community service attitudes 9.24 8.60 9.49 9.10
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Individual responsibility 2.94 3.18 3.76 2.68

Table A7. Mean Scale Values at Ages 18 and 24 for Males and Females
Males Females

Scale 18 Years 24 Years 18 Years 24 Years

Political participation 11.99 11.84 10.00 10.28

Community service 8.72 7.38 7.86 6.86
Political discussions 4.85 4.32 3.81 3.53
Information consumption 9.54 9.79 7.60 8.24
Diversity 3.39 3.66 3.61 3.81
Political trust 4.20 4.98 3.94 4.89
Political participation attitudes 9.50 11.40 12.71 13.24
Community service attitudes 9.37 9.00 9.39 8.91
Individual responsibility 3.40 3.11 3.38 2.50