Apple

“The apple never falls far from the tree?” - Political Socialization in Vienna

APPLE is designed as a small pilot project that examines the family as an agent of political socialization. As many findings of political socialization research date back to the 1970ies, the project tries to contribute to the question, if those findings are still valid. In particular, we want to determine if and how far parents and teenagers correspond in their personal characteristics, political attitudes and behaviors, all above political participation and political information behavior. We focus on those characteristics and attitudes that are known to affect political participation, as political efficacy, civic duty, system support or satisfaction with democracy. Bridging political socialization research with political psychology, we also include personality traits, stable cognitions as right wing authoritarianism and parenting styles. In addition to the simple degree of conformity of distributions of attitudes and behaviors, we ask, if patterns that link attitudes and behaviors are similar for parents and offsprings.

In order to answer the research questions, we conduct n=150 pairs of interviews with teenagers and their mothers in Vienna in February and March 2012. A first interim report (in German) will be available in summer 2012.

The project is funded by Wiener Hochschuljubiläumsstiftung der Gemeinde Wien and Arbeiterkammer Wien.