CIRCLE Working Paper #67 - Making Educational Progress: Links to Civic Engagement During the Transition to Adulthood

This working paper looks at the educational progress over four years of a national sample of young adults and the relationship between educational progress and four forms of civic engagement (voting, volunteering, civic media use, and motivation to serve society). [...] For the purposes of this working paper, a select sample of respondents was utilized, i.e., those who were between the ages of 16 and 30 at the beginning of the study and who reported family income at baseline (N = 1,666). [...] Note that educational progress was based on progress between Waves 1 and 3 (i.e., over four years) and that civic engagement for the progress and static groups is analyzed at each wave that the item was asked in the survey. [...] Second, that the group who made educational progress over the four years of the study were more likely than their peers who made no progress to vote at the beginning and at the end of the study. [...] Civic Attitudes/Motivations for Investigating AmeriCorps The pattern of civic attitudes is similar to the patterns for the other civic behaviors: Respondents in the educational progress group were more likely to say that contributing to the greater good (i.e., serving their community and a desire to reduce inequality) were relevant reasons why they had investigated AmeriCorps.