Civic engagement of future citizens: An insight from Peruvian students’ attitudes towards relevant societal issues as predictors of expected conventional political participation

Studies that cover civic engagement in adolescents approach its understanding from the cognitive domain of civics and citizenship. However, it is crucial to also pay special attention to the adolescents’ affective-behavioural domain regarding political and social issues and how they could affect their civic engagement in adulthood, particularly in complex contexts with emerging and challenging fragile democracies such as Peru. Concerning this, we propose a model about adolescents’ attitudes toward relevant societal issues as predictors of their expected conventional political participation, an approach to future civic engagement. We applied a multilevel path analysis based on data from 5,166 Peruvian 8th-grade students (M_age = 14.03; SD = .88) participating in the 2016 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study. Our results showed that agreed attitudes toward equal rights of men and women, ethnic/racial groups, homosexuals, and trust in civic institutions positively predict expected electoral participation, but agreed attitudes toward corrupt practices in government turn out to be a negative predictor. Likewise, agreed with attitudes toward equal rights of ethnic/racial groups, disobedience to law, authoritarianism and corruption in government, and trust in civic institutions positively predict expected active political participation; however, agreed attitudes toward equal rights of men and women are a negative predictor. Promoting the exercise of civic attitudes would help to follow fewer passive roles and thus tend towards active political participation, which, in addition, would be seen not only as a space to obtain benefits but also to develop citizenship genuinely committed to democracy.