The Classroom-Kitchen Table Connection: The Effects of Political Discussion on Youth Knowledge and E

By sheer happenstance, the distribution of parents and students in the control and treatment groups was approximately the same as in the larger sample (36% of the participants were in the control group in the parent-student subsample, compared to 37% of students in the larger sample; 28% of the parent-student subsample were in Treatment Group #1, compared to 29% in the larger sample of students; a. [...] Across all of the groups and all of the categories, the frequency of use of the various sources dropped in survey 3, six weeks after the experiment ended. [...] (Two-tailed tests.) Breaking down the difference in means for the scale from survey 1 to survey 2 showed that, although the mean of the scale increased from survey 1 to survey 2 for both the treatment and control groups, the difference was significant only at the level of p < 0.10 for the control group, while the difference was significant at p < 0.05 for the two treatment groups. [...] Also, the statistical significance of the effect of treatment 2 on the AP and honors students was less than 0.05, while the signifiance of the effect for the other students in the treatment was less than 0.10. [...] That this occurred even for the control group may have been due to the timing of the research, during the presidential primary and caucus season, as well as the presence of honors and AP students in the control group.