The Long-Term Impact of High School Civics Curricula on Political Knowledge, Democratic Attitudes and Civic Behaviors: A Multi-Level Model of Direct and Mediated Effects through Communication. CIRCLE Working Paper #65

This report examines the effects of exposure to various elements of a civics curriculum on civic participation, two forms of political knowledge, internal political efficacy, political cynicism, news elaboration, discussion elaboration and various forms of interpersonal and mediated political communication behaviors. The data are based on a longitudinal study of high school students in a challenged large urban school district in Ohio. Two approaches to instruction are contrasted: stimulating political communication by discussing media sources and engaging in political debate; and rote learning of traditional civics content. Both approaches correlated "negatively" with civic outcomes, but there could be several interpretations of that correlation. Fifteen appendices are included: (1) Correlation Table for Dependent, Mediating and Control Variables; (2) Summary of Intraclass Correlations (ICC) and Significance of Level of Variance Accounted for in Random Effects (Empty) HLM Models; (3) School Contextual Model for Factual Political Knowledge; (4) School Contextual Model for Civic Participation; (5) School Contextual Model for Cynicism; (6) Classroom Environment Contextual Model for Newspaper Use; (7) Classroom Environment Contextual Model for Factual Political Knowledge; (8) Classroom Environment Contextual Model for Knowledge Structure Density; (9) Classroom Environment Contextual Model for Civic Participation; (10) Classroom Environment Contextual Model for Cynicism; (11) Course Contextual Model for Newspaper Use; (12) Course Contextual Model for Discussion Frequency; (13) Course Contextual Model for Factual Political Knowledge; (14) Course Contextual Model for Civic Participation; and (15) Course Contextual Model for Discussion Elaboration. (Contains 3 figures, 2 tables and 3 footnotes.)