Civic Measurement Models: Tapping Adolescents' Civic Engagement

This working paper is the result of a project whose goal was to produce a set of civic measures with good psychometric properties
that are appropriate for use with young people ages 12-18. These measures tap aspects of adolescents civic behaviors, opinions, knowledge, and dispositions. These measures are easy to administer and can be used by educators, staff of community-based organizations, program evaluators, and scholars. The data used to derive the civic measures were gathered from two waves of surveys with 1,924
students ages 12-18 from 88 social studies classes in the Northeastern United States. These data were collected during the 2004 election campaign with the pre-survey occurring prior to the election
(mid-September to October) and the post-survey occurring after the election (late-November to mid-December). All constructs in this report are based on students self-assessments. (Authors)