How College Makes Citizens: Higher Education Experiences and Political Engagement

Perrin, Andrew J.; Gillis, A. R.

doi:10.1177/2378023119859708

Cited by 27 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 47 publications

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“…The impact of higher education participation on attitudes to politics, political activism and interest is well documented, with graduates more likely to be politically engaged than nongraduates (see for instance, Hillygus, 2005), although recent studies have explored the extent to which this is attributable to higher education institutions or is intrinsic to the broader social backgrounds and life experiences of graduates (Kam and Palmer, 2008;Perrin and Gillis, 2019). This latter point raises the question as to the uniqueness of higher education in modern society in shaping political values and opinions.…”

Section: Higher Education and Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher education and the importance of values: evidence from the World Values Survey

2022

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The collection of data on values through instruments such as the World Values Survey has focused attention on two opposing but inter-related trends, namely the combination of substantial cultural change in many countries and the persistence of distinctive traditional values. This reflects the interplay between social changes associated with modernisation and globalisation—including increased global trade and the rise of global popular culture—with traditional values country-specific systems. In this paper, we introduce a focus on another potentially important source of change, that of widening higher education participation and attainment, and the extent to which self-reported values differ between university graduates and non-graduates. We investigated this question using data from the most recent collection of the World Values Survey (2017–2020) for six core values—family, friends, leisure, work, politics, and religion—and tested for the influence of higher education attainment on the perceived “importance” of each value and the extent to which this influence differs across values and in gender, generation and country grouping sub-samples. We find evidence for consistent effects in most contexts, with no statistical differences between graduates on non-graduates in relation to the propensity to view family and work as important, statistically significant positive effects on the propensity of graduates to view friends, leisure, and politics as important, and a significant negative effect in relation to religion.

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Section: Higher Education and Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher education and the importance of values: evidence from the World Values Survey

2022

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“…In panel 1 of Figure 2, we offer an empirical illustration of the engagement bias in the Pew data. For each survey, we calculated the proportion of the sample with higher (academic) education—a primary correlate (and cause) of political engagement (Burns, Schlozman, and Verba 2001; Hillygus 2005; Perrin and Gillis 2019)—and plotted it as a function of unit response in the survey. We reversed the horizontal axis to demonstrate the effect of a decline in unit response.…”

Section: Declining Response Rate and Survey Biasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Survey Nonresponse and Mass Polarization: The Consequences of Declining Contact and Cooperation Rates

Cavari¹,

Freedman

2022

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Recent studies question whether declining response rates in survey data overstate the level of polarization of Americans. At issue are the sources of declining response rates—declining contact rates, associated mostly with random polling mechanisms, or declining cooperation rates, associated with personal preferences, knowledge, and interest in politics—and their differing effects on measures of polarization. Assessing 158 surveys (2004–2018), we show that declining cooperation is the primary source of declining response rates and that it leads to survey overrepresentation of people who are more engaged in politics. Analyzing individual responses to 1,223 policy questions in those surveys, we further show that, conditional on the policy area, this survey bias overestimates or underestimates the partisan divide among Americans. Our findings question the perceived strength of mass polarization and move forward the discussion about the effect of declining survey response on generalizations from survey data.

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“…Public awareness varies across the EU Member States. It is generally assumed to be higher in the so-called 'old democracies', which include the countries of Western Europe (Perrin & Gillis, 2019).…”

Section: The Evolution Of Public Governancementioning

confidence: 99%

Communicating about Healthcare Reform as Part of Good Governance During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Experiences from Finland and Poland

Kohtamäki

Sikorski

2022

mls

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The right to information, understood as a citizen’s right of access to data used in the process of making and enforcing laws, is a natural component of democratic systems. In the rich societies of Western Europe, which for years have been supporting civic education, society consciously uses the right to information. It is the interaction of citizens with decision-makers among others in the process of public information flow that changes ordinary public governance into good governance. The authors refer to the contextual understanding of good governance within the framework of multi-level interactions at the level of central and local government. Good governance should be understood as the achievement of ‘public value’ – i.e., the shared needs of many citizens but within the context of innovation and the economic development of societies. Informing means strengthening trust in public authorities, which in democratic states should have nothing to hide (even in a crisis).

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How College Makes Citizens: Higher Education Experiences and Political Engagement

Cited by 27 publications

References 47 publications

Higher education and the importance of values: evidence from the World Values Survey

Higher education and the importance of values: evidence from the World Values Survey

Survey Nonresponse and Mass Polarization: The Consequences of Declining Contact and Cooperation Rates

Communicating about Healthcare Reform as Part of Good Governance During the Covid-19 Pandemic. Experiences from Finland and Poland

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