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Abstract
Since its inception, educating students to be informed and engaged citizens has been one of the objectives of higher education in the United States. Efforts to achieve this goal have taken various forms, and the terminology used to describe this work (civic engagement, political engagement, democratic engagement) has been inconsistent. The purpose of this study was to identify attitudes and perceptions about the importance of democratic engagement among Generation Z undergraduate students (born 1995 or later) at a large, public, research institution in the South, and to identify any correlations between attitudes and perceptions and self-reported intent to engage in behaviors associated with democratic engagement during the 2020 presidential election cycle. Data were collected using an instrument consisting of three scales from the Civic Attitudes and Skills Questionnaire (Moely, Mercer, Ilustre, Miron, & McFarland, 2002) and an adapted version of the Political Engagement Project survey (Beaumont, Colby, & Ehrlich, 2018). T-tests and ANOVAs were utilized to analyze differences in attitudes and perceptions as well as self-reported intent to engage in specific behaviors based upon the demographics of class standing, school or college enrollment, gender identity, racial or ethnic identity, political party affiliation, and political ideology. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to identify correlations between attitudes and perceptions and reported intent to engage in behaviors associated with democratic engagement. Responses indicated that participants did perceive democratic engagement to be important, but that some students, particularly women and those from minoritized racial/ethnic backgrounds, were not confident in their sense of political efficacy. This finding is consistent with previous research and demonstrates that “one size fits all” approaches to promoting democratic engagement are not likely to be effective. Attitudes and perceptions were also shown to correlate with reported intent to engage in behaviors associated with democratic engagement during the 2020 presidential election cycle. Implications for practice based on these results are discussed, with emphasis placed on intentional, collaborative, and interdisciplinary approaches to making democratic engagement relevant and attainable for women and those from minoritized racial/ethnic backgrounds. The importance of highlighting the role of social justice in democratic engagement is also discussed.