The Engaged Citizen Index: Examining the Racial and Ethnic Civic and Political Engagement Gaps of Yo

Because no single survey has assessed the full range of engagement activities, the 40 indicators used in this index are compiled from six institutions: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Juvenile Justice, and the U. [...] This way of thinking about incarceration, not as the dichotomous outcome (becoming incarcerated or avoiding incarceration), but rather as the culmination, on average, of a set of risks of incarceration, has the advantage of enabling the Engaged Citizen Index to compare the percentile rankings of Blacks, whites, and Hispanics in a range of indicators. [...] In an effort to empirically test the bias introduced in the weighting process and to estimate the robustness of the index, we ran the analysis assigning an equal weight to each indicator, and then compared these results to those calculated using the experts’ weights. [...] In the case of voting in state and local elections, the weight of voting in the presidential election was divided into thirds, with one- third of the weight going to state and local elections and two-thirds of the weight going to the presidential election. [...] 5.2 Participation in Civic Life As the category with the greatest weight in the index (46 percent), the Black- white gap of almost 11 percentile points and the Hispanic-white gap of 9.5 percentile points in participation in civic life are quite similar to the overall gaps.