Frequency:
To address the research question that whether an increase of civic engagement among high school students in the American society exists, the observed frequency counts (the percentages) of engagement rates for the 8th, 10th, and 12th grades students were examined as following. The portions of male students participated in the survey across three grades stay steadily around 49% in all survey waves, which suggests the reliability of the sample used. Geographically, schools from four U.S. regions were used in the sample includes NE (Northeast), NC (North-central), S (South), and W (West). The participation rates for both NE and NC regions rises from grade 8 to grade 10 and then all dropped slightly for the 12th grade. Reversely, …show more content…
Across the birth cohort groups, a dramatic increase in civic engagement took place from earlier birth cohorts (1974 cohort) to the 1986 cohort followed up by a decrease from the cohort 1991 to the most recent birth cohorts, while stays steadily for all the other cohorts. The pattern for the age effect illustrates a virtually positive correlation between the civic engagement and the age of the students, which is saying that the older the students are, the more likely they will be engaged in the civic actions in the daily life. A significant racial disparity between white and non-white students regarding their civic engagements exists in both period and cohort patterns. Students who are white trended up to higher level of civic engagement compared to their non-white counterparts with all the other socioeconomic gradients controlled. For example, the odds ratio of civic engagement rates for white students fluctuated around 5 while for the non-white counterparts was around 3 across different survey waves. Similar period pattern was also found for the variations of family structures. while the students who were from the intact families are much more likely to engage into the local civic actions, those who were from the single or non-parent families held comparably lower rates of engagement. Furthermore, the disparity between the intact family students and the non-intact family students was enlarged with the recent waves while stayed mild in earlier years. Likewise, a gap of engagement rates existed in the cohort patterns as well for the interactions between the family structures and birth cohorts of students from 1974 cohort to the most recent 2002 cohort. The interactions between socioeconomic indicators and survey years revealed the general