Scientific Approaches to Measuring Democracy and Civic Engagement

Civic Technology Community Group,

Hello. It is interesting to consider multidisciplinary approaches to creating and improving tools for the scientific measurement of democracy and civic engagement. I would like to share an interesting report pertaining to these topics: Mapping Civic Measurement: How Are We Assessing Readiness and Opportunities for an Engaged Citizenry? (https://citizensandscholars.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Citizens-Scholars-Mapping-Civic-Measurement-1.pdf).

"Questions surrounding the strength of our democracy dominate today’s headlines. Americans across every spectrum — ideological, political, racial, geographical, generational, cultural, you name it — express concern about our country’s trajectory. Unlike previous periods where economics, foreign policy, or education might have been the focus of common attention, today the future of our nation’s very fabric is the primary focus of debate."

The report "features a collection of measurement tools, rubrics, and more than 200 resources in use by practitioners across education, business, philanthropy, community institutions, media, government, and civil society."


In the report, the following terminology is utilized:

Civic Learning - The development of the civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions of people, resulting in citizens who are civically well-informed, productively engaged, and hopeful about democracy. Civic learning is a broader conception of civic education that recognizes the long-term, multidimensional approach to cultivating effective citizens inside and outside the classroom, at the workplace, within the community, and online.

Civic Measurement - the attempt to answer these two questions: (1) How ready people are to contribute effectively to civic life? (2) How well does our civic infrastructure support, enable, and inspire those contributions? Both of these questions contribute to the overarching goal of understanding if we are making ongoing progress as a healthy democracy.

Civic Readiness - An individual’s preparation to be an effective citizen through four overarching civic dimensions: what individuals understand, what or how they participate, how they connect with organizations and others, and what they believe that influences their engagement as citizens.

Civic Opportunities - Systems, platforms, programs, laws, and processes for individuals and groups to practice and build the civic dimensions of understand, participate, connect, and believe.


The key findings are:


  1.  Civic readiness is being measured much more than civic opportunities.
  2.
Notable gaps exist among people doing the measurement work as well as the kinds of tools available.
  3.
Voting dominates civic measurement.
  4.
There are varying definitions for what good citizenship means, all of which need examining as our world is changing.


Best regards,
Adam Sobieski