What Do We Know about Civic Engagement?

We might define the field of youth civic engagement as comprising all the programs that engage young people to be active citizens, plus relevant research and evaluation. This field is not monolithic but instead consists of several distinct projects. Each project has its own objectives for social reform that depend on facts about how young people are engaging in public life, hypotheses about what kinds of programs or strategies would enhance their engagement, moral premises, and strategic analysis about how to change large-scale policies and priorities. In the following article, the author describe several such projects in turn.