Predicting Political Involvement through Demographics, Overall Involvement, and Political Interest

Abstract

Relationships between demographic characteristics, general involvement characteristics, and political interest characteristics were compared as predictors of political involvement. Previous research tended to focus on one kind of political involvement at a time, but in this analysis different kinds of involvement factors are grouped together and therefore more generalizable. The Political Temperament Survey was completed by 340 participants in 2010 from a medium size Midwestern city. Results replicated the findings that age, gender, frequency of political knowledge acquisition, political interest and membership of non-political clubs contributed to political involvement. But results did not replicate the common findings that strong political feelings, partisan strength and religious service attendance contributed to political involvement. The full model, consisting of all potentially influential factors, predicted political involvement better than the three reduced models, consisting of one group of characteristics at a time, on their own.

These analyses were supported by Dr. Kevin Smith and Dr. John Hibbing, co-directors of the Political Physiology Research lab. More information on their work can be found here.

Samantha Lauf

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Index

Introduction

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion

References

Table 1

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Full Report