Background to the Research

• Democratic Dialogue, an independent think tank based in Belfast, has always had a strong interest in young people and politics since it was established in 1995. Set up to encourage fresh political thinking, broaden participation and to work in partnership with a wide spectrum of organisations, the organisation has more recently initiated a series of specific and innovative projects to engage young people.
• The project with which this paper is concerned was called 'Young People and Decision Making' and sought the views of young people (teenagers) on the current political system in NI.
  

Research Approach

• Three key issues were focussed on:
  • Exploring young people's understanding of and engagement with political processes and decision-making;
  • Identifying what issues were important to young people;
  • Looking at ways of engaging and stimulating the involvement of young people in the political process.
• Informal discussions, moderated by facilitators, were central to the project and were concerned with assessing young people's knowledge of, and interest in, politics; and collecting views on how to stimulate such involvement and interest. The discussions involved groups of teenagers drawn from across NI, balanced by gender, religion, urban/rural location and class. As well as smaller groups, quizzes and polling exercises were used to encourage debate.
• Finally, a seminar brought together participants and political representatives, to enable the former to interact with the latter and to seek views on how the project's findings should be reflected in the public domain.
  

Main Findings

• While many reported not being interested, young people were found to have a relatively high knowledge of basic political facts. Over half of those asked ten multiple choice questions on a range of political issues were able to answer seven correctly. Differences in performance correlated with age and possibly social class.
• Understanding of politics appeared less widespread. While members in at least four of the groups could articulate quite clearly the policy and ideological differences between the main political parties, young people from two of the areas were unsure of reasons for voting for certain political parties and unsure of why certain activities might be regarded as 'political'.
• Almost half of the participants agreed that 'young people aren't interested in politics', with younger participants and those from disadvantaged areas being more likely to appear uninterested.
• Higher interest was shown in relation to particular political issues, such as war and poverty abroad and health and crime in NI. 'Bread and butter' concerns, such as burglary, ranked above interest in talks on the future of NI. The overriding factor influencing this relative apathy was the negative assessment of political progress in the talks.
• While they were roughly divided as to whether young people were interested in politics, a big majority felt that politics mattered. Some participants realised that political engagement was linked to maturity. They are quite willing to vote, sign a petition or even join a campaigning organisation and are just as interested in international as domestic affairs.
• The biggest barrier to political engagement was related to the negative view of politicians, whom they want to engage with the issues in which young people are interested and to communicate with them in an effective way. The generational difference between young people and politicians was also evident.
• The vast majority were averse to high commitment, such as joining, working for or standing for election for a political party. The picture is not quite so simple, as the young people were significantly more likely to join a non-governmental organisation and were also perfectly willing to associate themselves with a cause with which they identify, such as by signing a petition.
• The young people did know what would encourage them to be more politically engaged, with the highest preference being the introduction of independent political education in schools. Mock parliaments would give an opportunity to develop their skills, while parties and politicians, better informed about and focused on youth concerns, would gain their interest.
• There was relatively low support for using electronic media for delivering political information and voting, largely due to concerns about security. There was also a lack of support for lowering the voting age to 16. Young people do not want gimmicky or populist answers to the 'apathy' problem.

Conclusions/Recommendations

• Participants identified a number of recommendations as emerging from the project, which are as follows:
  • More effort is needed by politicians to work with young people and understand their needs.
  • Greater emphasis is required on providing more young-person-friendly information about politics.
  • Political education should be a compulsory part of the school curriculum, to be delivered independently.
  • A Young Person's Parliament should be introduced in NI.
  • Political parties should introduce policies for young people and appoint someone to speak on youth issues, if they do not do so already.