Political Competence of Youth at the Verge of Adulthood - PKM

• Acronym: PKM
• Coordinator: Institute for Social Research in Zagreb
• Financed by: ISRZ Research Programme – Ministry of Science and Education via NextGenerationEU Fund, European Commission
• Duration: 1 January 2024 – 31 December 2027

The project aims to deepen the understanding of various aspects of the political competence of the new generation of final-year secondary school pupils in Croatia. It is focused on the generation that is at the verge of full participation in the political life of the community. Within three research strands (two qualitative and one quantitative), the project aims to acquire an in-depth insight into the pupils' understanding of the political competence, the current state of their political knowledge, and to explore how well informed they are and what attitudes they have towards politics. Additionally, the project will explore the teachers' perspective regarding the teaching of the content that should empower pupils during their political socialization in school. The collected data will enable a comparison with the previous research waves that explored youth political literacy (2010, 2015 and 2021), and also bring new insights by improving existing and introducing new research approaches, contructs and measures. Besides purely scientific and scholarly outcomes such as publishing of papers and presenting at conferences, the gathered insights will be useful in considering public policy solutions related to the challenges that the democratic order is facing – low levels of participation, distrust in institutions, authoritarian tendencies, etc.

Main aim/s of the project

The main aim of the project is to explore various aspects of political competence of the new generation of final-year secondary school pupils in Croatia. The research consists of three research strands, with the following aims:

The qualitative research strand with pupils: The aim is to gain an in-depth insight into the students' perceptions of youth political competence and the knowledge, skills, and convictions they believe it entails. The data from this strand will be used for qualitative analyses and to map relevant constructs, informing the interpretation of findings from the quantitative strand with pupils.

The quantitative research strand with pupils: The aim is to gain insight into the current state of political competence among final-year secondary school students and to compare it with data from three previous research waves (2010, 2015, and 2021). Additional aims include the exploration of relations among various aspects of youth political competence (e.g. political knowledge, being informed on politics, (anti)democratic attitudes, trust in institutions, etc.).

The qualitative research strand with teachers: The aims of the qualitative research strand with teachers are: a) to gain in-depth insights into the experiences of teachers regarding the ways they teach the contents related to political competence, and b) to comprehend teachers' experiences regarding their own competence for teaching the mentioned contents, and to acknowledge their needs regarding professional training.