The Civic Bonding of School and Family: How Kids Voting Students Enliven the Domestic Sphere. CIRCLE Working Paper 07

The influence of Kids Voting USA, an interactive civics curriculum taught during election campaigns, is assessed in the context of three field experiments that took place during the fall of 2002. The research sites are Maricopa County, Arizona; El Paso County, Colorado; and Broward/Palm Beach counties, Florida. The authors present findings from the first wave of a panel study on the long-term effects of the curriculum on high school juniors and seniors and their parents. Data were collected from N=559 student-parent dyads. Results from standardized questionnaires are supplemented with focus-group interviews of students. The authors identify the initial curriculum effects on students, on parents, and on the family system as a setting for developmental growth. After looking at impacts of the entire curriculum, they examine whether specific components help to account for particular results. Finally, they point to implications for innovations in civics education. The following is appended: Item Wording & Coding for Measures. (Contains 5 figures and 16 tables.) [This working paper was produced by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).]