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Thesis Defense
- 1. Addressing Youth (Dis)-Engagement In the City of New Westminster Julie Clements Capstone Defense March 24,2010 1
- 5. Survey Objectives and Data
- 7. Policy Options and Evaluation
- 9. Conclusion2
- 11. Civic Competence
- 13. Self Esteem
- 15. NetworksSocial Capital: Features of social life that enable participants to act together to pursue shared objectives 3
- 16. Background continued The way youth experience civic engagement is different from previous generations The measures of political party membership, voter turnout, and membership/ activity in political organizations are inadequate to measure civic engagement of today’s youth Broader research definitions of civic engagement are needed and should correspond with the everyday experiences of youth Better measures identified include community belonging, civic knowledge, interest in participation, belief in the efficacy of engagement, and intention to participate. 4 (Bell 2005, Mackinnon et. al 2007, McCreary 2009, Cote 2006)
- 17. Policy Problem Policy Problem: Insufficient youth engagement in New Westminster planning and decision making Evidence: Less than 1% of respondents in the 2009 consultation of the New Westminster Downtown Plan were under the age of 25 years (n=1000+). Number of New Westminster Youth Designated facilities =0. The Youth Advisory Committee (YAC), struggles with engagement efficacy and communication New Westminster Youth have zero municipally designated adult allies with a policy focus. 5
- 18. Policy Problem: Frame of Reference When compared to other Lower Mainland Municipalities the lack of youth engagement in New Westminster is comparably low: 6
- 20. Participants: Administered to grade 10, 11, and 12 students
- 22. Response Rate
- 23. Representative7
- 25. To gather data using youth as the source
- 26. Large sample
- 27. To conceptualize youth engagement using a participatory approach8
- 28. Variables 9
- 29. Results: Participatory Data 10
- 31. Engagement Marginalization determined by SES and Minority Status
- 32. Gap in Civic Education
- 33. Mechanism of Engagement Matters11
- 34. Grade/ Gender Divide 12
- 35. Social Marginalization by wealth 13
- 36. Social Marginalization by minority status 14
- 37. Gap in Civic Education 15 Knowledge Social Capital
- 38. Mechanism of Engagement 16
- 39. Policy Objective Policy Objective: To increase meaningful youth engagement in municipal planning and decision making in the City of New Westminster 17
- 40. Criteria and Measures 18
- 44. Implementation is proposed in Stages:21 Short term Long term
- 46. Municipal government should be concerned over the lack of youth engaged as social capital is at stake
- 47. Policy options proposed, are informed from the survey analysis
- 48. Recommendations give the City of New Westminster viable options to increase engagement in the long and short term.22
- 49. 23 Thank you, your questions are invited
- 53. Based on participatory measures of community belonging, civic education, interest in participation, belief in the efficacy of engagement, and intent to participate.
- 54. Also by factors of age, gender, SES, neighborhood, and minority status25
- 56. Issues of reliability addressed by careful question wording (pilot)
- 58. Construct Validity- How well the measures conform with theoretic al expectations.26
- 61. Measures goodness of fit: compares frequency distribution with a theoretical distribution
- 62. Measures independence: whether the two variables in the cross-tabulation are independent from each other.27
- 63. Sample Characteristics 28 Grade is on p 22
- 65. Canada West Foundation: Next West Generation, political identities of western Canada’s young adults (5)
- 66. CD Howe Institute: Drop-outs, the Achilles heel of Canada’s high school system
- 68. O’Toole et al. (2003)-US, lit review on studies researching decline of political participation
- 71. Informed Consent-given through signed forms
- 72. No harm- communicated that refusal to participate would not affect their school marks, and if they felt uncomfortable with the questions they could choose to withdraw.
- 73. Confidentiality- there is no way of identifying any particular student by their answers. Also directed to NOT put name or student number anywhere on the survey
Editor's Notes
- Youth Engagement in this study is defined as: The meaningful engagement and sustained involvement of young people in shared decisions in matters which affect their lives and those of their community including planning, decision making, and program delivery.Youth Engagement has been the topic of widespread academic research due the positive impacts it has shown to have on community such as: citizenship, civic competence, moral development, self esteem, trust/ reciprocity, and social networks.The Theory of Social Capital is a framework encompassing many of these concepts and is therefore is linked with the notion civic engagement. To Robert Putnam, social capital is the: The features of social life that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives. He attributes decline in community engagement in the US to lack of social networks, trust and reciprocity.Youth disengagement suggests that youth issues are unrepresented on the political agenda due to exclusion of young people from decision making and planning. It also implies an erosion of social capital at the community level.
- Research finds that today’s youth experience civic engagement differently than previous generations whose participation was measured primarily by political party membership, voter turnout, and political activism. These measures are deemed inadequate- by recent research which argues- traditional measures misrepresent actual levels of youth engagement, thus the over-reporting perceived levels of disengagement and apathy. They argue that broader definitions of civic engagement are needed and should correspond with the everyday experiences of youth. It is suggested that better measures of engagement are: community belongingcivic knowledgeinterest in participationbelief in the efficacy of engagement (that is the input of youth actually being used to affect planning and decision making)and the intention to participate. These measures are intertwined with the notion of social capital, and used in concert have the potential to give a more realistic illustration of the youth engagement.Figure out how you will reference this slide“The young elector tends to be rather less interested in politics, somewhat less likely to turn out and vote, less committed to any political party… but this view of the young voter should not necessarily be taken as evidence of youth apathy or indifference to all things political” (Cloonan and Street, 1998)
- My policy problem identifiedis: Insufficient youth engagement in New Westminster, BC.This problem is evident several areas: First: The consultation process is inaccessible to youth. For examplea consultation conducted around the development of the Downtown Community Plan in summer 2009, engaged over 1000 community members, however, less than 1% of those heard were under the age of 25 years.Another indication of low youth engagement in New Westminster is the absence of youth designated facilities. Municipally operated, youth designated facilities in other communities are important youth assets and provide spaces for civic participation and engagement. The lack of a youth center or other youth designated space in New Westminster demonstrates lack of youth representation on the municipal agenda, and a low priority of youth within city budgets. Third: The youth advisory committee to council is a focal point for municipal youth engagement in New Westminster. This committee encounters little success with engagement efficacy as initiatives undertaken by the committee are sometimes outside of municipal jurisdiction. When this happens, City Council is unable to utilize YAC contributions as they are situated outside of municipal responsibility. Additionally, YAC has no channel in which to disseminate information regarding committee initiatives or relevant community issues. This is problematic as the youth viewpoint provided to council is unrepresentative of the youth community at large, and takes into account the perspectives of few. It also leaves the broader youth population is un-informed of the engagement youth have via the committee, and miss opportunities arising from this engagementFinally: The city of New Westminster currently has 5 youth designated staff resources who all are based out of Parks and Recreation. They serve to engage youth in many community activities but the engagement scope is decidedly recreation focused, leaving gaps in opportunities for youth to engage in planning or decision making.
- The problem of Insufficient youth engagement in New Westminster is accentuated when framed with respect to other lower mainland municipalities. I conducted a web review to determine relative levels of municipal services for youth: New Westminster was found to be the only municipality without any outreach services, as well as the only community lacking municipally operated youth designated spaces (youth centers).Vancouver was the only municipality with Youth planning staff having a policy focus, removed from the context of parks and recreation. New Westminster’s first youth centre which has an expected completion date in 2010 will give the community a youth to youth center ratio of 2840 which is comparable to both Maple Ridge and Burnaby.
- This study approaches the policy problem with a Descriptive Research approach. The focus is to compare and specify patterns which arise for identified subgroups such as gender, minority status, SES, and neighbourhood location (that is where in the city youth live).The participants of this study were grade 10, 11, and 12 students from New Westminster Secondary School. Survey administration took place during class time at the approval of the School District number 40. The ethical responsibility I had toward the youth respondents were of: Voluntary participation- youth were explicitly given the opportunity to refuse participation or withdraw participation after beginingInformed Consent-given through signed formsNo harm- commutated that refusal to participate would not affect their school marks, and if they felt uncomfortable with the questions they could choose to withdraw.Confidentiality- there is no way of identifying any particular student by their answersOut of the 385 surveys distributed, 332 were returned and properly completed, yielding a response rate of 86.2%The definition of a representative sample is one in which the profile of the sample is the same as that of the population.The only way to ensure the sample is statistically representative is to conduct random sampling. This study was not random as I relied on the voluntary consent of teachers to attend classes and have access to their students. However, due to the class location of survey administration it is highly unlikely that certain sub-groups of the population were systematically excluded or under-represented.New Westminster Secondary is the only high school in New Westminster therefore giving some representation of the population for grade 10, 11, and 12 public school students. Overall, 332 surveys were collected, which represents 21.7% of students in the population at NWSS
- The objectives of the method wereTo gain a local perspective on youth engagement. The Canadian literature I found regarding the topic of youth engagement generally had a wider scope than municipal engagement, for example, looking at national rates of voter turnout for young people, or rural vs. urban trends. Other British Columbian data mostly focussed on Vancouver Youth due to the progressive nature of their policy. This study was aimed specifically at New Westminster Youth between grades 10 and 12. Second was to gain data using youth as the source. Many studies on youth engagement utilize the expertise of service providers or youth workers as the source to generate knowledge on this topic. I wanted to use the youth voice to inform local knowledge about civic youth engagement.Maintain a large sample size: In order to make city wide inferences on how to address youth engagement via policy a large sample size was preferable. For this a survey was favored to the common method of focus groups and interviews utilized in other youth engagement studies. Using data found in other studies which utilized focus groups and interviews.To conceptualize youth engagement using a participatory approach proxied by the variables of: Community belongingCivic KnowledgeInterest in ParticipationBelief in the value of engagement, andIntention to Participate
- The variables used in the study to investigate youth engagement are: Community BelongingCivic Knowledge- proxied by knowledge of local elected representatives and who to contact with community concerns/ ideasInterest in Civic ParticipationBelief in the Value of Engagement- proxied by the belief youth ought to be involved in the process, the belief that youth input can potential affect council decisions, and the belief that upon engagement youth will be taken seriously by city staff.Intention to Participate in the futureSub-populations which will be used to analyze youth engagement will be Age-proxied by gradeGenderSESNeighbourhood location, and Minority Status
- The split between boys and girls is comparable in grades 10, and 11 with the difference in percentages ranging from -10.4%- 18.0%. However, when the respondents reach grade 12 girls report much higher frequencies of youth engagement than their male counterparts by at least 23% in nearly every case. The largest differences per variable have been highlighted in the table, you will notice that for every variable other than intention to vote, this value represents the grade 12 responses. This finding demonstrates that high school boys approaching adulthood are less engaged than girls
- Several participatory variables show that SES matters such as intention to vote, believe staff will take youth input seriously, interest in civic participation, and community belonging. These variables have been found in this study to be important determinants of youth engagement. The disparity found in low wealth categories indicates barriers that these youth in particular are facing with regards to youth engagement. Youth willingness to participate in an online poll, and belief that youth should participate are less effected by the factor of low SES as the rates of participation in these variables show comparable levels. Similarly, the variable of good civic knowledge shows a higher rate for youth in the low SES category that the average of all other categories combined. Youth from the low SES category are confident that youth should participate, and have relatively good civic knowledge concerning municipal issues, however they lack the capacity to engage due to low sense of belonging and civic confidence. The lack of civic confidence represents their reluctance to believe that youth input can make a difference, and are hesitant to trust staff who aren’t thought to take their ideas seriously. Also concerning is the non-existent rate of indication to vote in the next municipal election. Youth from the low SES category need to be targeted in particular to foster engagement in a diverse way
- Survey data also reveals disparities between youth who identify as a visible minority and youth who do not. The areas in which minority youth are not experiencing barriers are in the areas of civic knowledge, the intention to vote, and the interest in youth engagement.The rate of civic knowledge between minority and non-minority youth is exactly equal at 37.1%. The interest of visible minorities to engage in municipal planning and decision making and vote actually surpasses the rate for non-minorities. In other ways, the minority youth are marginalized with respect to youth engagement. Minority youth believe that youth should participate to a lesser degree than do non-visible minorities as well as having less civic confidence in engagement efficacy, and have less trust of adults to take their ideas seriously. Another notable trend is that visible minorities feel less community belonging than do non-visible minorities in the magnitude of 10%.
- The policy recommendations made are focused around the objective of increasing meaningful youth engagement in municipal planning and decision making in New Westminster.
- Youth Engagement Guide: This option relies on the finding that adults as mentors are a key component in the development of successful youth engagement. The guide will build adult capacity for building intergenerational partnerships with respect to decision making and public policy. It will clearly outline the concept of youth engagement, and use data from the Youth Engagement Survey to inform planners and decisionmakers of the barriers and tendencies of youth toward engagement. The focus of this policy is the development of adult allies for the youth community. The approach to increasing youth engagement is through youth education and development.2. This policy will promote a paradigm shift in both adults and youth emphasizing the potential for youth to be seen as a policy resource to the city rather than a policy problem. A Civic Youth Policy would be a legal document and need approval from City Council. Its existence would set a precedent in future planning and consultation processes to ensure youth representation on important civic issues. The focus of this policy is the legitimization of youth inclusion by age and relevant sub-category (gender, SES, minority status etc.). The approach of this policy will be to develop the community belonging of youth by legitimizing their participation and recognising their contributions to the planning and decision making process.The third option will identify a new mandate and develop an effective communication strategy for the YAC.The policy focus is to increase engagement efficacy. YAC initiatives have the potential to inform decision making, and the communication of this impact on the community should be shared with other youth to perpetuate engagement interest. The approach of this policy is to alter youth beliefs in participation by the dissemination of information from the youth advisory body. 4. This position would advocate for local youth engagement, and disseminate information about important municipal youth issues and engagement opportunities. Another advantage of a youth outreach staff would be to provide youth engagement support to other city staff attempting to implement via other policy optionsYouth outreach personnel would also be responsible for making public policy more youth friendly and educating young people about opportunities and advantages to participation.The focus of this policy will be the development of adult allies for the youth community as well as the development of civic knowledge and social capital. The approach of this policy will be to promote civic engagement to youth and provides diverse opportunities for future engagement.
- The Theory of Social Capital is a framework that allows the integration of concepts such as civic engagement and age.Putnam’s work is the most recent and has attracted the most academic attention for its holistic approach to community understanding.In his book, Bowling Alone, Putnam discusses the decrease of Social Capital in the United States and discusses it in terms of civic engagement
- Categorical data in the many of the survey questions limited the answers youth could make, to yes or no. It is possible that youth could have answered some questions inaccurately. Due to the class time constraints outlined by the school district in which to administer the survey, questions needed to be posed in a way that would take minimal time to fill out. The test-restest method of checking reliability of data is to ask a test group to answer the questions. Give them the same survey a week later and measure the degree to which they answered the questions the same. Due to confidentially and time, this test was not an option for me.VALIDITYContent Validity- the participatory variables are broken down into the different concepts around youth engagement.Construct Validity- The participatory variables conform well with ideas of social capital theory.Criterion validity is the third type of validity known, but not utilized in this study. It is when we compare how people answered our new measures of a concepts with exiting, well-accepted means of the concept. If the measures new and old are highly correlated, then the new measure can be called valid. In this case the old measures of participation are not widely accepted therefore this measure of validity could not be used.