Measuring Children’s Political Knowledge: Methodological Issues

What do children know about politics, and how can we construct an optimal measurement of their political knowledge? Methodological issues such as the choice of the items, the format and formulation of the questions, the interpretation of the answers etc. can have important impacts on the results (Delli Carpini, Keeter 1993 ; Mondak 2001 ; Tiberj 2004). These biases are faced in all studies but seem to be especially salient concerning children. The aim of exploring these issues is therefore twofold: elaborating valid knowledge scales for children and questioning the applicability of the findings to adult surveys. This contribution will discuss the results of a survey by questionnaires led with children aged 8 – 11 years old in Montpellier (France) in 2012, and it will present a new and wider survey to be led in 2014 – 2015. Each of these surveys aims to measure children’s political knowledge according to their social environment and personal characteristics. The results of the first survey showed that although most children had at least a minimal political competence, there were important differences among them according to their social origin. Regressive analysis showed that one of the most discriminating variables was the children’s school level. There can be two complementary interpretations of this result: first, it is highly probable that the conditions and dispositions favouring school competence also favour political competence. However, one could also conclude that children with a lower school level have more difficulties filling the questionnaire and are less meticulous, which could lead to an underestimation of their political knowledge. The existence of social inequalities concerning political knowledge is undoubted, but there remain methodological improvements to be carried out for understanding these inequalities, starting with more precise knowledge measurements. This contribution will propose several possible methods and techniques and it will present preliminary results.