Lasting Consequences of High School Environments:
Results from the Four-Wave Political Socialization Study
Introduction
Because survey research has been the method of choice in political socialization research,
attention has typically focused on individuals and their attributes as units of analysis, with but
modest attention being paid to the impact of local contexts, whether defined in terms of school,
community, or other aggregates. At the same time, the theoretical and substantive importance of
contextual features in the political socialization process has been recognized from the outset of
systematic study. Partly in reaction to the early work, which paid scant heed to local context (e.g.
Easton and Dennis 1969, Hess and Torney 1967), occasional contributions noted the importance
of distinctive local contexts such as Appalachia (Jaros, Hirsh, and Fleron 1968) communities of
disparate socio-economic statuses (Litt 1963) and—in Sweden—communes varying by rate of
economic expansion (Gustafsson 1974). As part of a recent revitalization of political
socialization research, Conover and Searing (2000) concluded from their four-community study
that civic engagement and civic education were closely tied to the practice of citizenship in
certain types of communities.
1
Convention