Project Vote Smart General Population and Youth Survey on Civic Engagement: Summer, 1999
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Project Vote Smart General Population and Youth Survey on Civic Engagement: Summer, 1999 Preliminary Results of a Nationwide Survey Project Vote Smart One Common Ground Phillipsburg, Montana Richard Kimball, Executive Director The Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service Washington State University Pullman, Washington Lance LeLoup, Director Nicholas Lovrich, Faculty Associate The Program for Governmental Research and Education Oregon State University Corvallis, Oregon Brent Steel, Director Robert Sahr, Faculty Associate Michelle Kittrell, Student Associate September 1999 Executive Summary A number of noteworthy findings from the Project Vote Smart/Pew Charitable Trusts 1999 Survey deserve special attention. This report sets forth a complete listing of survey findings from telephone interviews completed (July 12 to August 10) with 454 eighteen to twenty-five year olds and 872 persons of age twenty-six and over. These findings concerning younger voting-age citizens deserve special attention: ♦ Attention to Civic Affairs: Younger respondents pay less attention to government at all levels than older respondents. Although each group attends most to national affairs, the gap between younger and older respondents is especially pronounced about national government, where 22% of younger and 37% of older respondents indicated they pay “a lot of attention.” Among younger respondents, 12% said they pay “no attention” while only 4% of older respondents indicate that level of (in)attention. ♦ Trust in Government: A striking similarity noted is that both age groups express most trust in local government, though another 24% (younger) and 19% (older) indicate trust in “none of them.” ♦ Important Problems: Younger respondents express more concern than older respondents about jobs and the economy, about equal concern on education and crime, and less concern on health, moral concerns, and Social Security. This applies both to views of “the two most important issues facing our country today” and “the two most important issues facing your age group today.” ♦ Sources of Issue Information: The two age groups judge the most useful information sources similarly, except that younger respondents choose the World Wide Web as their most useful information source while older respondents rank it sixth. Neither group believes the news media do a very good job “reporting on issues important to you,” with only 13% of each age group indicating very good, 31% indicating good, and the remaining 56% indicating fair or poor. ♦ Registration and Voting: Participation differences are pronounced between the two groups, as nearly all research suggests: Younger respondents are less likely to be registered, 65% versus 78% of older respondents. An even larger gap appears concerning voting. Only 45% of younger as against 64% of older respondents indicate they “definitely will” vote in the 2000 elections. ♦ Political Information: Among five information questions about government and issues included in the survey, younger respondents score lower on all questions, averaging 2.88 correct vs. 3.40 for older respondents. The most correct answers for each group occurred in response to the open- ended question “do you happen to know what job or political office is now held by Al Gore.” The fewest correct answers for both groups respond to the question “What has happened to the national government deficit in recent years? Has it become larger, stayed about the same, or become smaller.” Among older respondents, 49% correctly indicate it has become smaller, as against 38% of younger respondents. The relatively low levels of information found in this survey reflect a pattern found in other studies as well 3 Introduction Results for this survey are based on telephone interviews conducted by trained university student interns and Project Vote Smart staff under the supervision of university faculty at Project Vote Smart’s former national headquarters in Corvallis, Oregon. The survey was designed by staff at Project Vote Smart, MTV, The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Medill News Service, and researchers at Washington State University and Oregon State University. Funding for the survey was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts as part of a national program to identify the issues of most interest to young voters, and to learn how to engage those young voters more fully in the upcoming national presidential election. There are two principal components to this survey: 1) a nationwide random sample of 1015 adults (18 years of age or older) constitutes one survey element; 2) an additional subsample of 312 young people in the age group 18 to 25 represents the second component. The nationwide survey effort resulted in a total sample of 454 eighteen to twenty-five year old respondents, and 872 respondents twenty-six years of age and older. The telephone survey was conducted during the period July 12 to August 10, 1999. For results based on each sample group, one can say with 95% confidence that the error attributable to sampling and other random effects is approximately plus or minus 4.7 percentage points for the eighteen to twenty-five year old cohort, and 3.4 percentage points for the twenty-six and older group. As with all opinion and attitude survey efforts, the wording of questions, respondent misinterpretation and other difficulties associated with implementing survey research efforts can result in some error or unintended bias beyond that attributable to the size of the samples employed. 4 Survey Methodology The sample for the Project Vote Smart survey represents a random digit dialing-generated sample of telephone numbers selected from all telephone exchanges in the continental United States. The nationwide probability sample was provided by Survey Sampling Incorporated (Fairfield, CT) and was pre-screened to exclude businesses, government offices, and PBX/interchange numbers. The random digit aspect of the sample is used to avoid “listing” bias, and provides proportional representation of both listed and unlisted residential household numbers. A minimum of four separate attempts (and a maximum of eight attempts) were made to complete an interview at every sampled telephone number. The calls made to households were staggered over times of the day and days of the week in order to maximize the likelihood of making personal contact with potential respondents. In each contacted household, interviewers asked to speak with the person eighteen or older in the home who most recently celebrated a birthday. For the youth sub-sample, conventional screening techniques were used to identify the 18 to 25 year old living at home (if any) who celebrated the most recent birthday. If a person in the 18-25 year old category lived in the household but was not at home at the time of the initial call, four callbacks were used to make the survey contact and conduct the interview. The overall response rate for the entire survey effort was 63 percent. Terminated interviews were considered refusals, and they were not included in the analyses. It should be noted that this survey includes only households in the continental United States that contain a telephone. In the several tables reported in this report, responses may occasionally total to 101% or 99% due to rounding error. NOTE: In comparisons of percentages across groups of 400 and 800, respectively, differences of approximately 6% are required to be confident that the differences observed are statistically significant (or unlikely to occur by chance) at the 90% level of confidence. 5 Self-Reported Respondent Characteristics Respondents to the 1999 Project Vote Smart/Pew Charitable Trust survey are quite representative of the nation with regard to gender, race and ethnicity, and with respect to household income vis-à-vis census parameters. In addition, the self-reported partisanship of respondents closely resembles findings reported recently by the Gallup Poll based on over 10,000 telephone interviews conducted in 1999 (http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990409c.asp). Respondent Gender 18 to 25 age group 26 and older Female 53.7% 49.1% Male 46.3% 50.9% Respondent Race/Ethnicity 18 to 25 age group 26 and older White/Non-Hispanic 70.5% 70.2% African American/Black 12.5% 12.2% Latino/Hispanic Origin 11.1% 10.2% Asian/Pacific Island 4.1% 5.5% Other 1.8% 2.0% Respondent Annual Household Income 18 to 25 age group* 26 and older Below $25,000 25.7% 15.9% $25,000 to $50,000 35.6% 30.9% $50,001 to $75,000 27.1% 31.0% $75,000 and Above 11.6% 22.3% *Note: many in this age group still lived at home or were dependent on their families for economic/educational support. Respondent Partisanship PVS Survey: 18 to Gallup Poll: 18 PVS Survey: 26 Gallup Poll: 30 and 25 age group to 29 group and older older Republican 22.3% 24% 26.1% 28% Independent-Other 46.3% 41% 38.7% 38% 6 Democrat 31.4% 35% 35.2% 34% 7 Section 1: How Interested in Politics are Young Voters? The first section of the survey asked respondents several questions on their past and current interest in political matters. In regard to the degree to which younger and older cohorts discussed politics, government, and current events with their parents or guardians while growing up we find few differences, with about a quarter of respondents of both age groups saying they discussed politics “often.” When asked how often both groups at present discuss political issues and current events with family and friends, forty-one percent of the 26+ age group “often” discuss politics compared to thirty-five percent of the 18 to 25 year old age group. What is most striking about the results in this section of the survey, however, is the contrast in the level of attention the two age groups pay to national, state and local politics. For all three levels of government younger respondents are significantly less likely to pay “a lot of attention” when compared to the 26+ age group.