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Assessing the Link between Adolescents’ Awareness of Inequality and Civic Engagement across Time and Racial/Ethnic Groups

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Abstract

Adolescents’ awareness of societal inequality has been linked to higher civic engagement. This study expands prior research by testing whether awareness of inequality differentially motivates prosocial and political forms of civic engagement, whether adults’ modeling of civic agency moderates links between awareness of inequality and civic engagement, and whether associations differ by race/ethnicity. Longitudinal data came from 3208 youth (Mage = 14.1, Range = 7–20, 56.1% female, 39.7% White, 38.4% Latinx, 12.3% Black, and 6.9% Asian). Across racial/ethnic groups, awareness of societal inequality predicted increased political behaviors and beliefs 2 years later. Adults’ modeling of civic agency predicted certain forms of civic engagement but did not moderate links. The findings advance theory and research on the motivating role of awareness of inequality for political beliefs and actions.

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Notes

  1. A small proportion of our sample was eligible to vote (8%). To ensure that findings related to political behavior were not driven by youth who were able to vote, the full model was re-estimated after recoding youth reports of actual voting to be missing. The resultant model produced similar results, as shown in Supplementary Table S4.

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Funding

This research was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and the National Science Foundation under Grant 1551520. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the John Templeton Foundation. The first author’s time was supported by a fellowship from UCLA’s Graduate Division.

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The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Welfare, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

    Jason Anthony Plummer & Laura Wray-Lake

  2. Montclaire State University, RYTE Institute, Montclair, USA

    Lauren Alvis

  3. Department of Psychology, West Virginia University, Morgantown, USA

    Aaron Metzger

  4. The Search Institute, Minneapolis, USA

    Amy K. Syvertsen

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Contributions

J.A.P. conceived of the study, participated in its design, performed statistical analyses drafted the manuscript; L.W.L conceived of the Roots of Engagement study and participated in its coordination of the study and was involved in revising the manuscript for critically important intellectual content; L.A. helped to edit the manuscript and reviewed the interpretation of the data; A.M. and A.S. were involved in revising the manuscript for critically important intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jason Anthony Plummer.

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Plummer, J.A., Wray-Lake, L., Alvis, L. et al. Assessing the Link between Adolescents’ Awareness of Inequality and Civic Engagement across Time and Racial/Ethnic Groups. J Youth Adolescence 51, 428–442 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-021-01545-6

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