I hope that it is OK to post a reply to the list.  I think you'll get a
much more productive set of replies if we can draw in part upon the
collective wisdom of the group.

Just off the cuff, I have two responses to what you posted, one positive
and one negative.  Perhaps these can serve to start a conversation.

On the positive side, I think you're exactly right to see this in part
as an opportunity to replicate and extend existing studies of political
socialization, such as the well-known Jennings Niemi studies.  For a
wide variety of reasons, substantive and methodological, this is a very
smart choice.  I'd urge you to look to other studies of youth
participation, such as those being conducted by the Institute of
Politics at Harvard and the studies funded by the Circle foundation.

On the negative side, the list of questions, particularly those dealing
with political information, seem so, well, 20th century.  While I
understand the pressure to maintain comparability with the time series,
the questions sound like things we pose to 40 year olds but are
directing them at 15 year olds.  Other than the few items about parents'
political affiliations, there seems to be nothing tailored uniquely for
this target population or generated from the scholarship on
socialization and youth engagement in politics.

For instance, do we really want to use valuable space asking 15-20 year
olds how much political news they get from newspapers (although you do
say "newspapers or the internet)?  The radio?  Are we focussing on 20
century technologies that are declining in usage simply to maintain the
time series?

And why not anything about emotions, feelings about the future, "public
mood"?  If conventional wisdom about disengagement about young people is
accurate, than we'd want to include more than just a very standard
political efficacy battery; we'd want to know whether they think
government cares specifically about young people; whether their vision
of the future is optimistic or pessimistic; and whether they think
politics is simply irrelevant to their daily lives.

Just my two cents,
Paul G.
Reed College

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