Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expansion of Political Participation of Young Adults in Urban Communities

年轻人的政治参与在美国各地建立充满活力的政治社区方面发挥着至关重要的作用。研究表明，不同人口群体在参与政治进程方面存在显著差异。本博士论文研究解决了这一差异，以调查影响不同人口群体的年轻城市成年人如何建立强大的政治联系和扩大政治参与的因素。该研究培养了一名来自经验科学数据收集和分析方法方面代表性不足背景的研究生，并有助于扩大历史上代表性不足的科学群体的参与。该研究为地方和州级决策者提供了见解，以支持他们的外展和沟通策略，有效地吸引不同人口的公民，并设计政策，以促进包容性和代议制民主。为了研究人口统计学差异与日常政治参与之间的关系，研究人员使用了定性和行为方法。这些方法包括多地点参与观察、半结构化访谈和专题分析。这项研究的发现有助于民主人类学和青年民主公民的辩论。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The political participation of young adults plays a vital role in building vibrant political communities across the United States. Studies have shown that there is significant variance in the participation in the political process across different demographic groups. This doctoral dissertation research addresses this variance to investigate the factors that impact how young urban adults from different demographic groups build strong political ties and expand political participation. The research trains a graduate student from an underrepresented background in methods of empirical scientific data collection and analysis and contributes to broadening the participation of groups historically underrepresented in science. The research provides local and state-level policymakers with insights to support their outreach and communication strategies to effectively engage diverse demographics of citizens and to design policies to foster an inclusive and representative democracy.To study the relationships between demographic variance and everyday political participation, the researchers use qualitative and behavioral methods. These include multi-sited participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis. Findings from this research contribute to debates in the anthropology of democracy and youth democratic citizenship.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.