Exploring the role of political awareness in youth’ political behaviour

This paper explores the role of political awareness (PA) in youth’ political behaviour. The analysis builds on political awareness (PA) as three dimensions, political attention, political knowledge and political understanding. The concept of PA is understood as a ‘reservoir of predispositions’, which citizens use to understand political messages communicated in public, in interpersonal relations and discussions and active participation in political affairs. We assume that PA is vital when they sort out information and prepare their political choices. After developing this new operationalization of PA it is important to explore how PA predicts political values, attitudes and behaviour. The current article builds on the previous conceptual development and explores how PA as a latent variable predicts internal political efficacy and political participation in elections as well as other less specific forms of political involvement. Control variables such as political interest and political trust are included. Data comes from a survey questionnaire of 360 students (200 Norwegian and 160 Danish). The analysis builds on the conceptual analysis of PA in Solhaug & Christophersen (2021) and is done in IBM Amos where structural models are presented. The results are discussed. The overarching motive for this conceptual project is first of all to explore the specific role of PA not just theoretically but also empirically in order to discuss possible radical changes in the political education in school.