Ideological Profiles in the Making: Issue Stances of Youth in Romania, Canada and Belgium

29 Pages Posted: 17 Jul 2012 Last revised: 1 Aug 2013

Date Written: 2012

Abstract

This paper deals with consistency of opinions of youth in Belgium, Canada and Romania. The arguments of the paper are that youth display consistency of their preferences on issues like diversity, role of state on the market and homosexual marriages and these are affected by political interest and time spent on television, internet or watching, listening or reading news. The study employs three levels of complexity of consistency: consistency of issues within the same issue dimension, ideological consistency, and ideological consistency that resists the test of time in order to discover instances in which youth is consistent with their preferences. The conclusions of this study is that youth display a higher than expected consistency of issues in all three countries. Ideological consistency tests reveal that Canadian and Romanian youth have consistent preferences with what left and right means in their respective polity. Longitudinal survey of preferences of youth in Romania does not reveal changes in consistency. The issues on which Romanian youth express preferences in a panel study are not linked with their left-right self placement. The study did find a minuscule effect of internet and television on consistency. However the effects dissipated for ideological consistency. Hypotheses were tested using a comparative survey of Romanian, Canadian and Belgian youth ages 15 to 16 from 2006, a panel survey of Romanian youth from 2006 and 2009.

Keywords: ideological consistency, political preferences, high school students

Suggested Citation

Burean, Toma, Ideological Profiles in the Making: Issue Stances of Youth in Romania, Canada and Belgium (2012). APSA 2012 Annual Meeting Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2110977

Toma Burean (Contact Author)

Babes-Bolyai University ( email )

58-60 Teodor Maniu street, Cluj-Napoca
67 Iuliu Maniu street, Sighetu Marmatiei
RO-3400 Cluj-Napoca, Cluj 435500
Romania

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