Democratic Theory and Civic Measurement: A Report on the Measuring Citizenship Project.

Using the Whitman Center Measure (WCM), the authors evaluated the impact of service-learning and voluntarism on the civic capacities, beliefs, and activities of youth by pre and post testing youth volunteers and comparison groups of non volunteers. The instrument is grounded in a theoretical perspective which challenges traditional behavioral citizenship research as too cognitively based and as limited by an elite-mass conception of democracy as voting, with its related and limited view of civic skills. The researchers found preferences among youth for a participatory view of democracy, significant movement among college volunteers to this perspective, and measurable, often significant increases among college volunteers in their self-evaluation of a set of twenty-three civic skills necessary for citizenship in a strong democracy. They also found significant decreases in political alienation among an AmeriCorps-affiliated youth service program. They conclude that voluntarism can measurably, positively, and under certain circumstances significantly impact the civic capacities, beliefs, and activities of youth (authors).