Political Information Efficacy and News Consumption in Young Citizens

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Political Information Efficacy and News
Consumption in Young Citizens

• Lynda Lee Kaid
• University of Florida

Youth Indifference to News Conference University
of Georgia October 8-11, 2006
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• Effects of young citizens lack of interest in
  news and political information and its effects on
  political involvementvoter turnout and other
  aspects of civic participation.

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• Despite increases in turnout for all voter groups
  in 2004, our young citizens remain our most
  care-less citizens.
• Generational and life-cycle patterns that have
  usually led to adopting the voting habit as more
  mature adults may be lacking in current
  generations.

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Low Information Levels and Low Involvement

• Knowledge is an important determinant of
  electoral and democratic participation (Delli
  Carpini Keeter, 1996).
• A strong relationship between young voters'
  perceptions or confidence in their political
  knowledge and the likelihood that they will
  exercise their right to vote.

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Political Information Efficacy (PIE)

• Extent to which one has confidence that they have
  the information necessary to participate in
  politics or to vote (Kaid, McKinney, Tedesco,
  2006).

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Theory of PIE

• 1. Theoretical Underpinnings
• 2. How we measure it
• 3. What evidence we have found for it.
• 4. How it relates to consumption and processing
  of various types of communication and media,
  particularly news.

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Theoretical Underpinnings of PIE

• External political efficacy relates to beliefs
  about the responsiveness of governmental
  authorities and institutions to citizens
  demands.
• Internal political efficacy, is manifested in
  beliefs about ones own competence to
  understand, and to participate effectively in,
  politics"
• (Niemi, Craig, Mattei, 1991, p. 1407)

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• Political information efficacy is closely
  related to internal efficacy but differs in that
  it focuses solely on the voter's confidence in
  his/her own political knowledge and its
  sufficiency to engage the political process (and
  to vote).
• Focuses on the Cognitive Elements of Efficacy

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Measurement of PIE

• 4 item scale uses 3 from Niemi et al.5 pt.
  agree-disagree
• 1 I consider myself well-qualified to participate
  in politics.
• 2. I think that I am better informed about
  politics and government than most people.
• 3. I feel that I have a pretty good understanding
  of the important political issues facing our
  country.
• 4. If a friend asked me about the presidential
  election, I feel would have enough information
  to help my friend
• figure out who to vote for.

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Testing the Scale in 2004

• Used in 2004 in experimental studies of campaign
  message effects with young voters in our UVote
  team locations (more than 20 universities around
  the country) with 3269 respondents.
• In all six experimental waves, a series of 12
  items were used to measure aspects of political
  trust and efficacy.

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Post-Election Analysis

• 1. Factor analysis shows that the 4 items in
  our PIE scale always separate into a unique
  factor which accounts for a substantial amount
  of the variance in all of the tests.
• 2. When used together as a scale, these 4 items
  consistently achieve high Cronbachs alpha
  reliability scores ranging from .81 to .92.

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Evidence for Impact of PIE on Voting and Nonvoting

• Prior to 2004 our earlier research in 2000 and
  2002 we have demonstrated two important things
  related to the PIE concept
• With NES data and results from our nationwide
  experimental studies in 2000 we found that there
  are clear differences between younger and older
  voters in their levels of confidence in their
  knowledge and information and in their
  consumption of political news (Table 1).

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• Using NES data in 2000 and 2002, our regression
  models show that this significantly lower level
  of information confidence in young people has a
  significant relationship to voting or not voting,
  accounting for 6 of the variance in voting in
  2000 and almost 10 of the variance in voting in
  2002.

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Influence of Communication and Media on PIE in
2004

• 1. TV Ads After exposure to TV ads, young
  citizens were significantly more confident that
  they had the information they needed for
  political participation/voting.
• (Kaid, Hendren, Yun, Landreville, Postelnicu,
  2005 Kaid, Landreville, Postelnicu, Martin,
  2005 Kaid Postelnicu, 2005 Kaid, Postelnicu,
  Landreville, LeGrange, 2006-forthcoming)

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• 2. TV Debates Debate viewing in 2004 produced
  significant increases in political information
  efficacy for a panel of young citizens who were
  exposed to one of the three presidential debates
  in 2004.
• (McKinney Chattopadhyay, 2006-forthcoming).

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• 3. Internet Interactive features of the Web
  can have a significant impact on young citizens
  confidence in their political knowledge and
  information.
• (Tedesco, 2006)

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Relationship of PIE to Young Citizens News
Exposure

• 2598 young citizens who participated in one of 4
  experimental groups at more than 20 UVote
  universities in the U.S. in the fall of 2004.
• 1. First ad experiment (n 920) Sept. 28-30
• 2. Saw First Presidential Debate (n 570) Sept.
  30
• 3. Saw Third Presidential Debate (n 358) Oct.
  13
• 4. Second ad experiment (n 747) Oct. 30-31

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Characteristics of Sample

• Gender 42 male 58 female
• Age average 20.4
• Party ID 39 Democrats 37 Republican
• 19 Independent 4 Greens 1 none
• Race 68 White/Caucasian 12 Hispanic
• 7 Asian 6 African-Amer. 7 mixed or other

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Young Citizens Characteristics and PIE

• PIE Level
• Gender
• Male 14.34
• Female 13.09
• Party Affiliation
• Republican 13.82 vs. Indep.
• Democrat 13.82 vs. Indep.
• Independent 13.01
• Race
• White/Caucasian 13.89
• Minority 13.07
• African-Am 13.60 Caucasian and African-Am not
  sign. diff
• Hispanic 13.28 Hispanics not diff. from
  African-Am. but significantly lower than
  whites
• Asian 11.62 Asians significantly lower than
  all other groups

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Predictors of PIE for Young Citizens in 2004

• 1. Interest in Presid. Campaign
• 2. Level of Media Exposure about
• the Campaign in Last Week
• 3. Information from News and Nonpartisan
  Sources on Internet
• 4. --Female

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• 5. Days a Week Watching National
• Network News
• 6. Watched All Three Presid. Debates
• 7. --Watching News on Local TV
• 8. --Hours a Day Spent on the Internet
  
• 9. Listening to Political Talk Radio
• Forward Multiple Linear Regression R2 .48
• (Controlled for Political Party ID, Race,
  Newspaper exposure, speaking with others, radio
  news, watching the Daily Show)

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PIE and Voting in 2004

• Post-election Web Survey of 227 young citizens
  who participated in one of the experimental
  sessions during 2004
• Voted Did not vote
• Information Efficacy Level 15.67 13.88
• p

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Internet News and PIE

• Correlation between PIE and frequency of turning
  to WWW to decide how to vote R .25
• Correlations between Information Efficacy Level
  and Usefulness of Information Sources on Web
• George Bushs Web site .17
• John Kerrys Web site .23
• ABC News Web site .10
• NBC News Web site .10
• CBS News Web site .02
• FOX News Web site .09
• CNN News Web site .21
• USA Today News Web site .10
• NYT News Web site .18