Political Activity and Political Attitudes in Teenagers: Is There Any Correspondence? AResearch NoteAuthor(s): Glynis M. Breakwell, Chris Fife-Schaw, John DevereuxSource: Political Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 745-755Published by: International Society of Political PsychologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3791336Accessed: 17/11/2008 15:09

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Political Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 4, 1989

Political Activity and Political Attitudes In Teenagers: Is There any Correspondence? A Research Note

Glynis M. Breakwell,' Chris Fife-Schaw,' and John Devereux

Although considerable attention has been paid to identifying the processes involved in the political socialization of young people, very little work has addressed the relationship between young peoples'political activities and their political attitudes. This paper reports a study of 210 British 16-18-year-olds and assesses the levels of political activity in this group and relates these to political attitudes. The results suggest that greater levels of activity are as- sociated with individuals holding left-of-center political views. Such individu- als reported paying greater attention to TV and newspapers with a high political content and having more political discussions with teachers and parents. While the more active were more likely to have political discussions, politics was still not found to be an important topic of discussion among peers.

KEY WORDS: political activity; political attitudes; teenagers; Britain.

INTRODUCTION

A long-standing aim of political psychologists has been to study the relationships between people's political attitudes and their political behaviors. Research has, however, failed to produce unequivocal evidence that attitudes lead to behavior, or even preference in the political domain (e.g., Campbell et al., 1960; Converse, 1964; Davis and Runge, 1981; Himmelweit et al., 1985; Leitner, 1983; Milbrath, 1962). In fact, the relationships between particular attitude sets and certain types of political activity have received relatively less attention (Renshon, 1977). What research there has been in this area has

'Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, England. 745

0162-895X/89/1200-0745$06.00/1 ? 1989 International Society of Political Psychology

concentrated on the relationships between the structuredness of attitudes (rather than their directionality) and political involvement (Achen, 1975; Converse, 1980; Judd and Milburn, 1980; Judd et al., 1987). There are, however, quite good theoretical reasons for expecting there to be relation- ships between attitude direction and political activity.

Inglehart (1971) in his discussion of materialist and postmaterialist value systems in postindustrial societies argues that those who adopt postmateri- alist values are more likely to become involved with certain forms of politi- cal activity. These include activities in support of environmental protection, civil liberties and various antimilitary causes. Those who hold materialist values, on the other hand, are more likely to engage in only those political activities directly related to their economic status and survival needs, such as food riots. At present, in Western societies, such activities are relatively less common, and materialists consequently appear politically inactive.

There is relatively little literature that deals with political activity among teenagers. Most studies have been primarily concerned with the socializa- tion of attitudes and partisanship (Greenstein, 1965; Hess, 1971; Jennings and Niemi, 1974, 1981; Renshon, 1977). Where political activities have been examined the principle aim has been to link activity with either antecedent conditions (e.g. parental activity, Jennings and Niemi, 1981) or affect for political institutions (Sigel and Hoskin, 1981).

The relative lack of interest in teenage political activities may stem from two types of reasons. The first is that historically the young are one of the least politically active groups in Western societies and thus their impact on the political process has been minimal. The second is that teenagers do not appear to hold coherent political attitudes and thus linking attitudes to activities would prove problematic (Easton and Hess, 1962). Cochrane and Billig (1983), for example, found extremely confused political views among school-age teenagers while Greenstein (1965) reported that 4th to 8th grade children had very limited and specific kinds of knowledge about the politi- cal world. Furthermore, attempts to use political attitude scales with- sub-15-year-olds have proven problematic. While Insel and Wilson (1971) felt it was possible to use scaled measures with children as young as 8 years of age, later theorists (see Renshon, 1977) have highlighted a number of methodological and statistical shortcomings with this approach.

However, this difficulty should not prevent the study of teenagers' political activities. Indeed, such study is becoming increasingly more rele- vant as various interest groups (e.g., the British Labour Party) overtly com- pete for the allegiances of the young. Monitoring of levels of political activity among teenage youth also seems valuable since there is evidence that young people are becoming, in the U.K. at least (Cochrane and Billig, 1983), alienat- ed from the democratic process. This alienation is often manifest in support

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for extreme right-wing groups and various forms of extra-parliamentary action.

Also a recent British opinion poll (Times/MORI, 1/9/1986) suggested that 66% of the 18-24 age group were politically apathetic and unlikely to vote at the next General Election; 25% were sure they would not vote. Further questioning also revealed considerable dissatisfaction with the political process: many did not trust politicians and felt they were only involved in politics for their own gain.

If it is difficult to measure, or perhaps recognize, organized political thought in children and there is at least some organized political thought in 18 + -year-old age groups, how does this development come about? No single type of socializing agent has yet emerged as having a dominant influence upon teenagers' attitudes. However, Beck (1977), in reviewing the power of different agents, notes that little research has focused on the role of work experience in socialization or, for that matter, has been done outside of the American context.

In the U. K. recent studies have suggested that experience of work has a considerable impact on teenagers' thinking about politics and their orien- tations toward taking political action. Cochrane (1985) argues that member- ship in labor unions often increases the salience of political action and politicizes young workers. The impact this influence has (either to the left or right) is a direct function of the individual's relationship with union activity. Similarly, Willis (1977) argues that the workplace is a source of considerable information about the political relationships between groups. Young workers are quickly socialized by immediate co-workers and supervisors to accept the dominant power relationships between workers and management.

These studies, however, do not attempt to make explicit comparisons between those who have work experience and those who remained in educa- tion and thus we are unable to say that work experience per se is more effec- tive in priming political action and attitudes than anything else. Hence the present paper will report a survey of British teenagers who were likely to have had the opportunity to gain experience of work. It addresses a number of the issues raised above and is primarily concerned with the identification of relationships between political attitudes and political activities.

METHOD

Sample

The sample was drawn from lists of pupils who were attending school in 1984 and were eligible to leave school in mid-1985. The state sector schools

747

were located in suburban Surrey, a relatively affluent area of the U. K. Three hundred ninety-eight teenagers were mailed the present questionnaire in May 1986. The had taken part in a previous and larger (n = 1751) study in 1985 concerned with orientations toward technological training and related work/training issues (Breakwell et al., 1988).

The three hundred ninety-eight teenagers contacted for the present study were chosen at random (within sex) from this larger group (two proving un- contactable). By the time of the mailing (May 1985) all would have had to choose whether to seek work or remain in full-time education.

From this mailing 210 returned usable forms which represents a return rate of 52.8%. As the topic area of this reasearch was potentially sensitive, particularly to parents with whom the respondents were still likely to be living, only one mailed reminder letter was deemed appropriate. Given the addi- tional difficulties in tracing teenagers who had moved out of the region we consider this return rate to be acceptable for the purposes of the present research.

Of those returning the forms 84 were male, 120 female, and 5 failed to provide this information. Those returning the questionnaires were com- pared with those who failed to return it on the basis of the data collected in the earlier study. These respondents were more likely to have achieved greater state examination success at '0' level at the end of their 5th year (3.39 vs 2.67 '0' levels, t = 2.82, p < 0.01) if they had been old enough to know their results at the time of the first study. Those who returned the question- naire but were not old enough to have taken their state examinations were less likely to be taking CSE examinations than those who failed to return the form (1.97 vs 3.25, t = -4.47, p - 0, a higher proportion of CSE's taken can be treated as an indication of lower academic achievement).

This sample is therefore not a representative cross-section of the teenage population of Surrey and, given the general finding that better academic per- formance is associated with greater levels of political activity (e.g., Milbrath, 1965) it is likely that the present data if generalized would well overestimate the levels of political activity.

One hundred five of the sample had experienced, or were in, full-time employment and 105 had not had any full-time work experience.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire was presented as a booklet which contained an ex- tended version of the Mirels and Garrett (1977) shortened version of the Wilson and Patterson Conservatism scale with an additional 7 items from the full 50-item Wilson-Patterson scale that had been used in the earlier research with this group [Breakwell et al. (1987), see appendix 1 for items].

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A simple behavioral report measure consisting of 14 types of political activity was presented along with questions about trades union membership and educational history. Further questions concerned the types of people with whom they had engaged in political discussions.

RESULTS

The Protestant Work ethic scale proved internally reliable with a Cronbach's a of 0.73 and a mean score of 52.27 (SD = 8.5, a low score indicates greater adherence to the Ethic). There was no significant gender difference in scores. The Conservatism measure, after factor analysis (ob- lique rotation), proved to have two interpretable factors underlying it. Items loading above the 0.3 level on each factor were used to form subscales. The first, labelled moral conservatism, contained 15 items and had a mean of 30.54 (SD = 5.35) and an a of 0.70. There was a gender difference with females being more morally conservative than males (males = 28.20, females = 31.09, t = - 6.16, p = 0).

The political conservatism subscale (8-items) has a mean of 14.54 (SD = 3.54) and an internal reliability coefficient of a = 0.62. There was no gender difference on this subscale. These Conservatism measures were not significantly correlated with each other (r = -0.04, n.s.).

Scores on the political conservatism measure were predictive of politi- cal party preference where respondents expressed a preference (F(2, 154) = 31.32, p - 0, means Conservative = 16.65, Alliance = 13.43, Labour = 11.78) but scores on the moral conservatism measure were not associated with partly preference (F(2, 152) = 0.64, n.s.).

The 14-item checklist of political activities was subjected to Guttman- scale analysis as it has been suggested that political activities are hierarchical in nature (Milbrath, 1965). Three of the items proved not to scale and were dropped from further analyses. These were: "regularly watched TV news," "regularly read a newspaper," and "engaged in unlawful activity to promote a cause." The first two of these failed to contribute to a Guttman scale of activities and on reflection these activities are not necessarily political in nature; people often attend to the news media in order to gain nonpolitical information. The "unlawful action" item drew numerous written comments and it was felt that the validity of responses could not be assumed.

The remaining 11 items formed an adequate Guttman scale with a coeffi- cient or reproducibility of 0.96 and a scaleability of 0.61. The ordering of the items is given in Table I.

The mean number of activities was 1.39 (SD = 1.60, n = 198) and there were no significant differences in responses to the items attributable to gender, either overall or activity by activity. It should be noted that 34.3 o

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Breakwell et aL

Table I. Items Used in the Political Activity Measure

Numbers Reporting Each Activity

Supporters of the

Conservative Alliance Labour All Item (n = 210) Party Party Party Respondents

(1) Held political discussions with 31 38 22 109 friends/family

(2) Signed a petition 19 29 20 83 (3) Given money to a protest 6 6 9 26

group (4) Attended a political meeting 7 1 3 11 (5) Taken part in a demonstration 1 5 2 10

or march (6) Put a political poster in 3 2 2 9

the window (7) Spoken at a political meeting 3 2 2 8 (8) Written to an MP 1 3 3 7 (9) Joined a political party 3 - 3 6

(10) Collected money for party or cause 1 - 1 2 (11) Led or organized a protest - - 1 1

group Guttman scale

Coefficient of reproducibility = 0.96 Coefficient of scalability = 0.61

of the sample did not report doing any of the above activities and a mere 2.0% (four individuals) had engaged in five or more of the activities.

Given Milbrath's (1965) findings that those from higher socioeconomic classes and those with better education are more likely to become politically active and given that the present sample has been drawn from these groups, these figures would confirm low levels of activity among British teenagers.

The level of political activity was correlated with scores on each of the scaled measures. All three correlations were statistically significant with lower activity being associated with greater moral conservatism (r = -0.17, p < 0.05, n = 189), greater political conservatism (r = -0.29, p - 0, n = 193) and greater adherence to the Work Ethic (r = 0.18, p < 0.01, n = 198). These findings support the notion that teenage political activity in the U. K. is associated with more liberal/left-wing attitudes.

This picture is not as straightforward, however, when party preference is considered. Analysis of variance indicated no significant relationship be- tween party preference and activity levels (F(2, 149) = 2.45, p = 0.09) though the rank ordering of parties by activity level was in the expected direction (means-Conservative = 1.19, Alliance = 1.59, Labour = 1.94).

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Political Activity and Political Attitudes

Turning to the impact of work experience on political activity, those who had experienced some form of full-time paid employment (or YTS) en- gaged in fewer activities than did those who had not had such experience (workers mean = 1.14, n = 102, nonworkers mean = 1.66, n = 96, t =

2.30, p < 0.05). An explanation for this finding is not immediately apparent from the data. There is no systematic difference in political or moral conser- vatism between those who had worked and those who had not (t = -1.28, n.s. and t = 0.14, n.s., respectively). It may be that those in work had less time in which to be active. However, it may also be that those who were in work had not achieved as much in their education as those who had not worked and remained at school (t = 3.45, p < 0.001, mean academic point scores-workers = 30.18, nonworkers = 38.09). Political activity is more likely to be associated with greater levels of education if Milbrath's (1965) general findings hold true and indeed this is the case in the present study (r = 0.25, p - 0). The difference in activity between the workers and non- workers may be a byproduct of the level of their academic attainment.

Of the 105 respondents who had experience of full-time work only four had joined a trades union. This finding, while reflecting national figures for

Table II. Numbers of Respondents Citing each Category of Socializing Agent at Least Once

No work Some work Overall Agent experience experience (n = 210)

Friends outside work 17 19 36 or school

Friends at work/school 16 13 29

Others at work/school 0 0 0

Teachers/lecturers 14 6 20

Family 24 22 46

Politicians/local 10 16 26 councillors

Authors/journalists 19 13 32 media in general

Other 1 1

Notes: (1) 77/210 cited no agents

89/210 1 31/210 2 13/210 3+

(2) Only the first three different types of agent cited were coded.

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teenage union membership, prevents sensible comparison of levels of political activity between union-members and nonmembers. However, if membership in a trades union is important in politicizing young people, then its influence must be restricted to those areas and industries where union membership is traditional among the work force. It could, of course, be argued that the effect of a union is not dependent upon being a member. Merely working where a union is active may serve to politicize young workers since they are exposed to particular rhetoric and social relationships otherwise unavailable.

When asked explicitly who they felt had influenced their political attitudes 77/210 (36.7%) identified no agents at all. Table II gives a break- down of the numbers citing each type of agent by whether or not they had some experience of work.

As Table II shows, a majority report being influenced to some degree by others but there were no significant differences in activity levels attributable to reported influence by any particular category of agent. However, the raw number of agents cited was correlated with political activity (r = 0.21, n = 198, p < 0.001), as might have been expected, and also negatively with political conservatism (r = - 0.14, n = 205, p < 0.05) though not with moral conservatism (r = - 0.01, n.s.) or adherence to the Work Ethic (r = 0.00, n.s.). Hence those who were active were more likely to admit to being in- fluenced by external agents (and more of them) and were more likely to be politically liberal.

DISCUSSION

The present study is a brief description of the relationships between political activity and attitudes in a sample of British teenagers. As might have been predicted only a very small proportion of this group were politically active with most respondents restricting their political activities to discus- sions and the signing of petitions and other low-commitment episodic be- haviors [to use Milbrath's (1965) taxonomy of activities].

Confirming Inglehart's (1971) position, it seems that activity, as meas- ured here, is associated with more liberal/left-wing political attitudes and with not adhering to the Protestant Work Ethic. Those who do adhere to this ethic are less politically active, which would be consistent with the idea that the rewards of life have to be earned directly through hard work and effort.

Though levels of activity are associated with left-of-center attitudes, the corresponding link with party preference has not been shown. Clearly, while the endorsement of conservative political positions is associated with

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Political Activity and Political Attitudes

a greater likelihood of wanting to vote Conservative, partisanship and at- titudinal leanings are far from equivalent.

Contrary to predictions, experience in the work place was associated with lower levels of activity and it seems likely that if work experience does socialize political activity then the experience needs to be longer than was the case for the respondents here. If work experience is a potent socializing force, then its power is more likely to lie in priming the acceptance of con- tingencies in the adult political world than in prompting activity (cf. Willis, 1977). Similarly the socializing potential of unions is only likely to be real- ized where union membership is traditionally high and current national figures would suggest membership is declining among all age groups.

The measurement of activity in the present study has raised a number of theoretical issues about the nature of political activity. First is the argument that inactivity as measured here may obscure genuine satisfaction with, or at least implicit acceptance of, the status quo. Milbrath (1965) notes that such acceptance has, in the past, been associated with conservative opinions; liberalism with wishing to change the status quo. However, this is now challenged by those who argue that rationality in political matters is not widespread (eg. Lau, 1986; McGuire, 1986). Thus activity may have more to do with a failure to comprehend a particular problem or issue (or to un- derstand how to cope with it) than with satisfaction.

A second issue surrounds the degree to which respondents understand the full implications of the term "political." While social and political scien- tists would consider any act concerned with protest and/or power relations to be a political act, it is unlikely that this conception is shared by teenagers. It seems more likely that for teenagers the term 'political' is associated with formal governmental offices and office holders before anything else (cf. Adelson and O'Niell, 1966). Hence activities related to pressure groups such as 'Save the Whale' and various antiabortion groupings may occur but may not be reported as political activities.

In addition, it may be the case that there are a number of causes which, while attractive to conservative teenagers are not seen as political for the rea- sons given above (e.g., PROLIFE, the reintroduction of Capital Punishment). Hence, the assertion here that activity is associated with left-wing attitudes may only apply to a restricted range of commonly understood political causes/issues.

Given all this, it remains the case that the level of teenage involvement in the political process is still low in mid-1980s Britain. While the present sample was drawn from a relatively affluent portion of British society there is, as yet, no comparable evidence of greater activity among less privileged teenage groups. Where there is activity it is generally of a low commitment type and appears to be associated with those holding left-of-center views.

753

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to acknowledge the Leverhulme Trust for sup- porting this research. They would also like to thank reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

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