Cohesion through participation? Youth engagement, interethnic attitudes, and pathways of positive and negative intergroup contact among adolescents: a quasi-experimental field study
Cohesion through participation? Youth engagement, interethnic attitudes, and pathways of positive and negative intergroup contact among adolescents: a quasi-experimental field study
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DOI：
10.1080/1369183x.2019.1700787
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发表时间：
2020-01
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
James Laurence
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
James Laurence
本文探讨了青年参与（即有组织的团体、俱乐部或活动的社会参与）如何通过积极和消极的种族接触途径影响年轻人的种族间态度。为此，它考察了在全国范围内实施的大规模英国青年参与计划中发生的种族间凝聚力过程。采用准实验方法，对参与者样本和（倾向得分匹配的）对照组使用测试前/测试后数据，分析表明，参与导致年轻人的种族间态度发生积极变化，至少在参与结束后4-6个月明显。这种态度的改善主要是由年轻人积极的种族间接触的增加所驱动的，而参与对年轻人消极的种族间接触的水平没有影响。然而，参与对种族间态度的影响取决于年轻人在参与之前有多少积极接触：参加计划的年轻人积极接触较少，他们的积极接触水平有了更大的改善，这反过来又推动了他们种族间态度的更大改善。这些发现提供了令人鼓舞的证据，表明青年参与的场所，特别是国家参与计划，可以促进青少年群体间的凝聚力；尤其是那些在日常生活中积极接触较少的人。
ABSTRACT The paper explores how youth engagement (i.e. organised social participation in a group, club, or activity) can impact young people’s interethnic attitudes, via pathways of positive and negative interethnic contact. To do so, it examines processes of interethnic cohesion occurring on a large-scale, nationally-implemented UK youth engagement scheme. Employing a quasi-experimental approach, using pre-test/post-test data on a sample of participants and a (propensity-score matched) control-group, analyses demonstrate that participation leads to positive changes in young people’s interethnic attitudes, evident at least 4–6 months after participation ended. This improvement in attitudes is driven primarily by increases in young people’s positive interethnic contact, while participation has no impact on young people’s levels of negative interethnic contact. However, the impact of participation on interethnic attitudes depends on how much positive contact young people had prior to taking part: young people who joined the scheme with less frequent positive contact see substantially larger improvements in their levels of positive contact which, in turn, drives even greater improvements in their interethnic attitudes. These findings provide encouraging evidence that sites of youth engagement, especially national engagement schemes, can foster intergroup cohesion among adolescents; especially among those with less frequent positive contact in their daily lives.