Nie & Hullygus (2001) Education and Democratic Citizenship

so we know education is a strong predictor of a myriad of facets of democratic citizenship; "yet we know precious little about what goes on inside the educational process that has such a profound effect on so many aspects of democratic citizenship" (30). Most studies focus on the quantity of education, but not its content.

The Sample:
Baccalaureate and Beyond Longitudinal Study
Mostly white from high educated families, followed every 4 years, for 12 years.
All have the same level (high) of education and are from the same life cycle and birth cohort (held constant)--thus, this study is able to uncover if differences in other area (education quality) make a difference.

Variables:
Independent vars (10, apparently, though I only uncovered the following 8):
quality of university attended
public or private?
GPA
course load
course type-political science, engineering, etc
number of credit hours for each subject
math scores
SAT scores

Dependent vars (measures of democratic citizenship):
(1) Political Participation--campaign volunteering, attending a political rally or meeting, contributing money to a political campaign and writing a matter to a public official.
(2) Presidential Vote
(3) Community Service--nonpolitical voluntary activities
(4) Political Persuasion/political discussion--"In the last 12 months, did you talk to any people and try to show them why they should vote for one of the parties or candidates" (35)
(5) Public v. Private regard

These variables are to answer the question "Are more capable and better-performing college graduates more politically active? Are they more likely vote and/or participate in political discussions? DO they contribute more to community service? And are they more likely to give more regard to public or private issues?

Findings:
-Grades (GPA) are not a strong predictor of any of the dependent variables.
-SAT verbal scores are a very strong predictor of political persuasion, community service, vote, and participation scale."VERBAL PROFICIENCY SHOWS THE STRONGEST relationship of all the many educational variables we examine and is pervasive across the measures of political engagement and persuasion. These findings suggest that it is this kind of aptitude, not overall intelligence itself, that matters" (42).
-Math scores exert a negative relationship with the participation scale dependent variable as well as political persuasion, and no relationship with the other measures of citizenship. "Controlling for all else, including verbal aptitude, those who score better on the math section of the SAT actually perform fewer participatory acts than for others" (41).
-Institutional quality (ranking and whether its pub or private)--mostly null findings, though it is possible that the effect of "an elite education has simply not had time to take effect. In other words, as these recent gras age, as they settle into their communities, and as some decide to get involved in politics themselves, perhaps the importance of an elite education and the social networks it creates will be magnified" (43).
-Course type--numerous social science course credits has a strong positive relationship with all measures of democratic citizenship; business credits has a negative relationship with all dependent var measures. science and engineering either has a negative or zero relationship, and education has a zero relationship in all cases, and a negative relationship for the voting variable, and humanities courses exert zero relationship for all dep vars (47).

the aptitude scores were registered prior college... and as stated earlier, those with higher verbal scores were more likely to be politically active later in life; it is also the case that these students were likely to be social science majors... this may be one of the reasons why the strongest predictor in the study, for democratic citizenship once a college grad, was social science credits. But social science credits take by bio and engineering majors do indeed benefit these students, in addition to strenthening the mechanisms inducing political behavior for the already politically minded" (49).