Project Details
Projekt
Transitions, Changing Networks, and the Development of Young Adults’ Efficacy Beliefs and Political Engagement
Applicants
Professorin Dr. Birgit Becker; Professor Dr. Lars Leszczensky; Professorin Dr. Sigrid Roßteutscher
Subject Area
Empirical Social Research
Political Science
Political Science
Term
since 2021
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 439346934
The continuation of this project addresses the relationship between young adults’ socio-structural group memberships (social origin, immigrant background, and gender) and their political attitudes and (voting) behaviors (‘political engagement’ in the following). We take a dynamic, longitudinal perspective on the most important factors shaping the development of individuals’ political engagement in a crucial developmental phase during their lives. As in the initial project, we focus on efficacy beliefs as a core mediator between group memberships and political engagement. Efficacy beliefs refer to individuals’ beliefs that they can achieve certain goals, which we differentiate on three dimensions (personal, system, group), i.e., their beliefs about what they can achieve as an individual (e.g., in education, in politics), whether the respective societal system is responsive to their needs, and whether the system is responsive to the demands of their social group. We seek to explain how educational/occupational and political efficacy beliefs develop and how they affect political engagement by examining intra-individual changes over time in the critical phase of young adulthood. This stage of life is characterized by major transitions, especially school-to-work transitions. These transitions indicate ‘success’ (e.g., entering university) or ‘failure’ (e.g., dropping out from school). They also reflect changing social contexts (e.g., new educational institutions or workplaces with potentially different socio-structural and political compositions than previous contexts) that are often accompanied by changing networks (e.g., new colleagues). The overarching aim of the project is to understand how such transitions and related context and network changes affect young adults’ efficacy beliefs and political engagement. We particularly analyze how young adults' efficacy beliefs and political engagement develop if new social contexts and network members challenge their previous beliefs and attitudes. In the first funding phase, we successfully collected three waves of data on more than 2,500 15-18-year-olds in Germany. At the beginning of the second funding phase, our respondents will be young adults aged 18 to 21. We propose to continue our panel by fielding three additional annual panel waves. Our final dataset will consist of six panel waves that provide a unique data basis for answering our research questions, including major transitions and the socio-structural and political composition of new contexts and networks. Using this data, we will be able to examine how (education/occupational and political) efficacy beliefs of adolescents from different socio-structural (sub-)groups (social origin, immigrant background, gender) develop in young adulthood and how they impact political engagement.
DFG Programme
Research Units
