Explaining and predicting suggested relationships between human social capital, citizen political trust, and citizen political engagement

The United States of America was built on the foundation of a representative democracy. Citizens engage in various political activities to elect representation to create policies and programs that may benefit individuals, groups of individuals, and special interests. A citizen’s type of political engagement and level of political engagement may be influenced by the individual and group resources a citizen possesses, as well as the citizen’s level of trust in government to respond to their individual or group needs. This study contributes to the literature on political engagement by suggesting factors that predict political engagement in the United States. The goal of this study was to explore predictors of political engagement in the United States. Data from the National Politics Survey 2004 was used to analyze and interpret findings related to the nine hypotheses in this study. Survey items were selected from the survey to measure political trust, social capital, and political engagement. Citizen level of trust in the national government was used to measure political trust. Individual and group resource variables such as income, educational level, ethnic mix of friends, ethnic mix of neighborhood, closeness of ideas and interests to people, and maintaining or blending cultures were used to measure social capital. Three dependent variables were used to measure political engagement; voting, talking to others to persuade them to vote for or against a party or candidate, and attending a political rally in support of a particular candidate. Each dependent variable was measured separately against the independent variables in a hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicated that certain Socioeconomic Status variables, social capital variables, and the political trust variable failed to meaningfully predict citizen political engagement related to voting and attending political meetings or rallies, and had minimal meaningful predictability to talking to others to persuade citizens to vote for a specific party or candidate. The results also indicated noteworthy biases in the dataset that contributed to the model’s inability to meaningfully predict political engagement based on the variables suggested in this study.

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Human Resources Management

Grantor

Human Resource Education and Workforce Development

Year dc:date.available

2010

Author dc:creator

• Gilmore, Jr., James A.

• political engagement
• social capital
• political trust

Statement dc:rights

• unrestricted
• Release the entire work immediately for access worldwide.

Identifier

etd-11172010-091050
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/108

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:repository.lsu.edu:gradschool_dissertations-1107