Cited by 572Youth Development and Social SupportCitizenship Education and DemocracyYouth, Politics, and Society

Youth civic engagement in the twenty‐first century

Youniss, James, Bales, Susan, Christmas‐Best, Verona, Diversi, Marcelo, McLaughlin, Milbrey, Silbereisen, Rainer·2002·Journal of Research on Adolescence

Abstract

We enter the 21st century contending with the end of the Cold War's legacy of political uncertainty, expecting youth to play a significant part in the search for new principles that will bring about stability in the world political order. In forging the future, youth will have to collaborate with adults, but on terms more fitting of the historical circumstances that lie ahead than those of the past. This was the framework adopted by a group of social scientists who held several discussions to reflect on the issues and opportunities that bear on youth's civic engagement and development in the century that has just opened. The present article describes the results of those conversations, starting with the issue of defining civic competence, and the finding that an expansive definition is needed to match the real‐world circumstances that affect its development for youth internationally. Specific conditions, such as globalization, information – communication technology, and immigration, are emphasized as forces that affect youth and need to be taken into account by educators and policy makers. In this regard, responsibilities of schools, government, the commercial sector, and community organizations are outlined. Each is viewed as a potential constructive force for promoting engagement insofar as youth's strengths are recognized and focus is placed on building on youth's proven capacities. As always, it is youth’s task to make history in the future and society's obligation to provide youth with sufficient resources and an honest basis for hope in carrying out this task. The authors' policy recommendations are founded on this reciprocal relation that binds the youth generation with its elders in the common task of preserving, while transforming, society for the good of humanity.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1111/1532-7795.00027

Cites

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Competence development stems from the fact that meaningful civic engagement improves civic, personal, and social competences and generates social capital.

    “Competence development stems from the fact that meaningful civic engagement improves civic, personal, and social competences and generates social capital (Damon, 2004; Youniss et al., 2002).”
  • The strong evidence for positive individual-level outcomes, particularly in civic engagement (75.0%) and civic competences (72.9%), aligns with the developmental benefits proposed by Checkoway (2011) and Youniss et al. (2002).

    “The strong evidence we found for positive individual-level outcomes, particularly in civic engagement (75.0 %) and civic compe­ tences (72.9 %), aligns with the developmental benefits proposed by Checkoway (2011) and Youniss et al. (2002).”

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Youniss, J., Bales, S., Christmas‐Best, V., Diversi, M., McLaughlin, M., & Silbereisen, R.
Affiliations
  • Catholic University of America (US)
  • FrameWorks Institute (US)
  • Utah State University (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Venue
Journal of Research on Adolescence
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2002-03
Volume
12
Issue
1
Pages
121-148
ISSN
  • 1050-8392 (ISSN-L)
  • 1532-7795
OpenAlex
W2059453442
Cited by
572
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 18 · 2024: 32 · 2023: 19 · 2022: 27 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 29 · 2019: 20 · 2018: 25 · 2017: 38 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 35 · 2014: 34 · 2013: 42 · 2012: 34
FWCI
31.24
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Journal of Research on Adolescence (publishedVersion)
Funders
William T. Grant Foundation
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Safety Research › Youth Development and Social Support
  • Social Sciences › Education › Citizenship Education and Democracy
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Youth, Politics, and Society
Keywords
youth civic engagement, civic competence, youth development, globalization, information and communication technologies, immigration, citizenship education, political uncertainty, post-Cold War international order, youth policy

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review