Abstract

This thesis examined the impact of political knowledge on forms of political engagement in the United States. Prior literature has established a relationship between political knowledge and political engagement, where those with higher political knowledge were more likely to engage politically through acts such as voting. This study distinguished between the various forms of political engagement and political knowledge, and seeks to provide relevant data on who is more likely to have political knowledge, and what impact having political knowledge has. This served to reexamine trends found in past literature, in order to see if these trends have persisted or changed over time. This study analyzed data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) from 1988-2016 to explore the relationships between political knowledge and political engagement utilizing various regression models. Consistent with past literature, this study found demographic gaps in the distribution of political knowledge, although these gaps appear to be closing. While political knowledge had a strong and significant relationship with voting, the effects of political knowledge did not hold across all forms of engagement.

Notes

If this is your thesis or dissertation, and want to learn how to access it or for more information about readership statistics, contact us at STARS@ucf.edu

Graduation Date

2019

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Knuckey, Jonathan

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs

Degree Program

Political Science

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0007530

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0007530

Language

English

Release Date

5-15-2019

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Download

Share

COinS