Family, higher education, and post adolescent political orientations

Political investigators have stressed the importance of higher education as a major factor in modifying and redirecting an individual's orientations to politics. These researchers have noted that higher education is associated with greater political interest, efficacy and knowledge, greater liberalism, increased political participation, increased ticket-splitting, and changes in party identification. One problem, however, is that many of these studies have either concentrated primarily upon college student samples or have isolated college attenders from national samples. Such samples do not provide controls for other possible causal agents, especially those associated with family, such as family partisan behavior, status, authority patterns, etc. The present study rectifies this problem by providing for this needed familial control. The research design consists of a sample of college students plus their brothers and sisters who are of college age, but who have not attended college. This design enabled us to isolate the differential effects of family and college attendance and therefore more correctly analyze higher education's role in fostering non-partisan political behavior. We found that students and siblings did not differ significantly in partisan identification, perception of ticket-splitting behavior, or actual extent of straight and split-ticket voting. However, when looking at the more traditional participation variables such as percent registered and extent of voting, it appears that the traditional findings of higher education increasing participation were supported. We found less interest among siblings and less propensity for them to participate in traditional electoral activities. It seems as though higher education is an important factor affecting intensity of political participation, but not direction of partisan loyalties.