McIntosh, Hart & Youniss (2007) The Influence of Family Political Discussion on Youth Civic Development: WHich Parent Qualities Matter?

The development f civic competence in children--what are the crucial factors?
-discussion?
A number of studies (i.e. Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995) have found a correlation between discussion of politics young in life with higher levels of political participation as adults; this study asks whether certain characteristics or qualities among parents enhance the likelihood of that happening, or not.

Discussion Nuances:
-the discussion of current events
-the level of the parents knowledge expressed

Data:
NHES 1996
Sample: 3,662 students and their parents

Research Design:
Measures of Civicness:
(1)monitoring national news
(2)political ken
(3)public communication skills
(4)community service

Parental Characteristics measured:
income
ethnicity
civic skills
behaviors
knowledge
attitudes

Discussion measurement:
4-point scale
"hardly ever" to "almost everyday"

First Step of Analysis: OLS Regression to determine which parent qualities predict civicness among children; next, the authors used interaction analysis to uncover which qualities matter, most, in regard to the discussion itself that lead to civicness (not sure yet how this is a different question?)...

IMPORTANT PARENT QUALITIES:
discussion, in general leads to higher levels of all four civicness variables.
"The findings that family political discussion is broadly linked to youth civic development conform to cognitive developmental theory, which argues that young persons construct meaning and knowledge about the political world through social interaction--in this instance, with their parents. The give-and-take of family political discussion, the data suggest, provides opportunity for youth to construct their own political understanding from the civic and raw material at hand" (497).
discussion was correlated with the parents' level of education, income and knowledge, indicating parents with higher resources engage in more discussion.

PARENT QUALITIES THAT MATTER FOR FAMILY DISCUSSION
interaction between parent political knowledge and parent-child discussion interact to predict level of child political knowledge; the higher the parents' level of poltiical knowledge, the more often there is discussion between the child and parent.

One more important finding is that although who the parents are (demographics etc) matter, what matters more to the development of their child's political ken is what they do with their child (bottom of 497).