title: Diverging Paths: Understanding Racial Differences in Civic Engagement Among White, African American, and Latina/o Adolescents Using Structural Equation Modeling.
abstract: There is increasing concern about the large civic engagement gap between Whites and Latina/o and African American youth. Some suggest this may be because traditional models and measures of civic engagement may not be as applicable for youth from historically marginalized groups. With an urban sample of middle and high school-age youth (n = 903, 52% female), we used structural equation modeling to identify differences in civic pathways between youth from different racial/ethnic backgrounds. We found significant differences between groups including much stronger relationships between exposure to democratic practices and civic self-efficacy and knowledge for African American and Latina/o youth than for White youth and a stronger relationship between civic knowledge and future civic engagement for Whites and Latina/os than for African Americans. These findings suggest that educators and researchers interested need to take into account the diversity of youths' racial experiences when examining youth civic development.
authors.affiliation: Center for Collaborative Education, 33 Harrison Avenue, 6th Floor Boston, Massachussetts, 02111.
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Littenberg-Tobias
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, Division of Epidemiology, 101 Haviland Hall, Berkeley, CA, 94720.|Generation Citizen, 152 Second Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105.
authors.forename: Alison K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Cohen
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003256:Community Participation; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D018864:Cultural Diversity; D005260:Female; D006630:Hispanic or Latino / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015233:Models, Statistical; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012922:Social Change; D062487:Social Marginalization; D044465:White People / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*
keywords: Adolescents; Civic engagement; Race/ethnicity; Structural equation modeling