IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jscscx/v9y2020i12p234-d464095.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

What Do Adolescents Know about Citizenship? Measuring Student’s Knowledge of the Social and Political Aspects of Citizenship

Author

Listed:
  • Geert Ten Dam

    (Department of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WS Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Anne Bert Dijkstra

    (Department of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WS Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Ineke Van der Veen

    (Kohnstamm Institute, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Anne Van Goethem

    (GGZ, Noord-Holland-Noord, 1816 BT Alkmaar, The Netherlands
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

Abstract

This paper analyses how young people’s citizenship knowledge is related to the different domains of citizenship in their daily lives. Based on a representative sample of some 5300 students in the third year of 80 Dutch secondary schools, our study relates citizenship knowledge to student background and school characteristics. The knowledge test developed for this study situates citizenship knowledge in the literature and the societal and political context defining the social structure students live in. The contribution of our study lies in this broad conceptualisation of citizenship, which is reflected in fine-grained, more specific results than the outcomes of earlier research. Gender differences are particularly pronounced in the social aspects of citizenship and are small in the political domain. As far as ethnic background is concerned, we see knowledge differences in the domain of “acting democratically”. This is also the domain where most of the differences in citizenship knowledge between students of the various schools and tracks occur. School size, public/private school, urbanisation and a more heterogeneous student population cannot explain these differences. To mitigate inequalities in citizenship knowledge between and within schools, which are relatively large in the Netherlands, further research is necessary to investigate micro-level mechanisms within schools.

Suggested Citation

  • Geert Ten Dam & Anne Bert Dijkstra & Ineke Van der Veen & Anne Van Goethem, 2020. "What Do Adolescents Know about Citizenship? Measuring Student’s Knowledge of the Social and Political Aspects of Citizenship," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-24, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:12:p:234-:d:464095
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/12/234/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/9/12/234/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manja Coopmans & Geert Ten Dam & Anne Bert Dijkstra & Ineke Van der Veen, 2020. "Towards a Comprehensive School Effectiveness Model of Citizenship Education: An Empirical Analysis of Secondary Schools in The Netherlands," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(9), pages 1-32, September.
    2. Erika Elsas, 2015. "Political Trust as a Rational Attitude: A Comparison of the Nature of Political Trust across Different Levels of Education," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 63(5), pages 1158-1178, December.
    3. Robert Andersen, 2012. "GINI DP 47: Support for Democracy in Cross-National Perspective: The Detrimental Effect of Economic Inequality," GINI Discussion Papers 47, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    4. Frederic Lord, 1952. "The relation of the reliability of multiple-choice tests to the distribution of item difficulties," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 17(2), pages 181-194, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. T. W. G. Meer & E. Ouattara, 2019. "Putting ‘political’ back in political trust: an IRT test of the unidimensionality and cross-national equivalence of political trust measures," Quality & Quantity: International Journal of Methodology, Springer, vol. 53(6), pages 2983-3002, November.
    2. Meral Ugur-Cinar & Kursat Cinar & Tekin Kose, 2020. "How Does Education Affect Political Trust?: An Analysis of Moderating Factors," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 152(2), pages 779-808, November.
    3. Belén Gutiérrez-Bermejo & Noelia Flores & Pedro J. Amor & Cristina Jenaro, 2021. "Evidences of an Implemented Training Program in Consensual and Responsible Sexual Relations for People with Intellectual Disabilities," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 18(5), pages 1-16, February.
    4. Liyuan Liu & Steven Donbavand & Bryony Hoskins & Jan Germen Janmaat & Dimokritos Kavadias, 2021. "Measuring and Evaluating the Effectiveness of Active Citizenship Education Programmes to Support Disadvantaged Youth," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-10, October.
    5. Guanghua Han & Simin Yan, 2019. "Does Food Safety Risk Perception Affect the Public’s Trust in Their Government? An Empirical Study on a National Survey in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(11), pages 1-15, May.
    6. Ahmet Bildiren & Özge Bıkmaz Bilgen & Mediha Korkmaz, 2021. "National Non-verbal Cognitive Ability Test (BNV) Development Study," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, September.
    7. Jiaping Zhang & Zhiyong Cai & Mingwang Cheng & Huirong Zhang & Heng Zhang & Zhongkun Zhu, 2019. "Association of Internet Use with Attitudes Toward Food Safety in China: A Cross-Sectional Study," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 16(21), pages 1-19, October.
    8. Anna S. Burger, 2015. "Extreme working hours in Western Europe and North America: A new aspect of polarization," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 92, European Institute, LSE.
    9. Brzezińska Justyna, 2018. "Latent Class Analysis in the Evaluation of Items in Survey Research," Econometrics. Advances in Applied Data Analysis, Sciendo, vol. 22(3), pages 55-65, September.
    10. José María Álvarez-Martínez-Iglesias & Pedro Miralles-Martínez & Jesús Molina-Saorín & Francisco Javier Trigueros-Cano, 2021. "Secondary School Students’ Perception of the Acquisition of Social Science Skill," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-12, March.
    11. Lu, Wenyi & Zhuang, Shilong & Fan, Siyuan, 2024. "Losing trust when pursuing development: How automation hindered political trust in China?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 218(C), pages 406-422.
    12. Marianna Battaglia & Marisa Hidalgo-Hidalgo, 2020. "Non-Cognitive Skills and Remedial Education: Good News for Girls," Working Papers 20.10, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Department of Economics.
    13. Sajad Rahimian, 2021. "The Determinants of Democracy Revisited: An Instrumental Variable Bayesian Model Averaging Approach," Papers 2103.04255, arXiv.org.
    14. Anna S. Burger, 2015. "Extreme Working Hours in Western Europe and North America: A New Aspect of Polarization," LIS Working papers 649, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:9:y:2020:i:12:p:234-:d:464095. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.