Building civic skill

In Friday's post on political exclusion I finished with a note about civic skills, a concept developed by Sidney Verba, Henry E. Brady and Kay Lehman Schlozman. I would like to expand a bit more on that concept in this post as it seems to me like this concept could be very useful in designing recommendations for encouraging participation in certain groups; they could receive training which focuses on building civic skills. Moreover I think that besides civic skill, confidence is an important factor in encouraging someone to participate.


1. What is civic skill and how do VBS measure it?

Civic skill is introduced in the article Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation, as one of the resources that people need to have in order to participate in politics. It is defined as "the communications and organizational skills that facilitate effective participation"(p. 271). Civic skills are developed through work experience, but also through being part of organisations (e.g. through volunteering for Humanitas), in high school government, and in one's church.

In their research the authors have used multiple indicators for civic skill, and they argue that these are perhaps not perfect but nevertheless do the job of indicating. They ask questions about:

• Level of education
• Participation in high school government (this one surprised me a little)
• Language proficiency
• Self-described skills and confidence
• "Skill acts"; how often did a participant attend a meeting where decisions are made, plan such a meeting, write a letter, or make a speech or presentation in the past six months a) at work b) for an organisation c) for a religious organisation (e.g. church).

2. Predictions about civic skills of mentally ill people based on known statistics of their employment, education etc

My hypothesis is that for mentally ill people, level of education and language proficiency will be roughly the same as for the rest of the population or slightly lower, but the real problem will be with the skill acts and the confidence. Note that these are related to each other: if a person writes a lot of letters he is more likely to feel confident in doing so (and vice versa.)

In this book I have here The Fundamental Facts 2007 from the Mental Health Foundation, they simply say that "low levels of education... are associated with a greater risk of experiencing a mental health problem" (p37). However, looking at the source they quote, I do not think this conclusion is merited. This (it links straight to the pdf) is the source they quote, a 2002 report by Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Table 2.1 on page 10 is about education level v. type of disorder. Looking at the column with all disorders grouped together and the one with respondents with no disorders, the differences can hardly be called significant: 28% of the people with disorders have no qualifications  versus 27% of the people without. 10% of both groups left school at 17. 39% of people with a psychotic disorder left school at 15, but then, there were only 60 such respondents.

This article however, "Education, sense of mastery, and mental health" is based on the premise that low education and mental health problems are linked - so there must be some truth to the claim. They refer to this source. I am now suitably convinced as they're psychiatrists and I'm not. The former article mentions that poor mental health may be one of the reasons why people have trouble completing their education. They advocate increased support and guidance for those who have educational problems.

It is a known fact that mentally ill people have more difficulty than average in getting and keeping a job. Sources: National Health Development Unit report, British Psychological Society (I am laughing at the line that they found "being a woman is the other strongest trigger influence on subjects with a genetic predisposition to mental disorder."). Also, an article from the American Psychological Association to say that unemployment also causes mental health problems. Relevant for our current topic is that if people are unemployed, they will have fewer opportunities for those skill acts that Brady, Verba and Schlozman talk about.

I do not have any statistics on organisation/church activity of mentally ill people, nor on their self-described skills (although I think that mental health problems often go hand in hand with low confidence and self-esteem, maybe because of the unemployment, the stigma attached to mental illness and the feeling of lack of control over one's own life.) I think it would be worth asking these sorts of questions if I get a chance to interview more people though; that said, anyone I'm going to be able to reach will already be a fairly active member of MindWise or NIAMH.


3. What would civic skills training look like? With help from M. Kirlin

For now I am interested in the question what sort of training could be offered to mentally ill people in order to help them improve their civic skill.  Let me advocate this a bit more: that civic skill is picked up largely on the work floor means it is also a job skill. Phoning people, writing letters, organising and participating in meanings; not far from the typical office job. Such training would need to be set up in such a way that it helps to build the self-confidence of the participants rather than patronise them (for instance with overly easy exercises). All in all it would work on several fronts at once; encouraging people to participate in politics and make their voice heard, preparing them for a job and helping to build their confidence at the same time.

For ideas on how to build civic skill I will borrow some ideas from Mary Kirlin, who in turn also got the idea from Schlozman, Verba and Brady's research. Her research focuses on adolescent "civic socialization" which I will remember as a key term that may become important later. By trying to apply her research to mentally ill people I am not trying to suggest that they are like adolescents, but rather that there is reason to expect that skill training that works in one place may also have positive effects for another group.

In this article she writes about community service programs and their influence on development of civic skills. She says she focuses on "how adolescents learn the doing of democracy, that is, active participation, not simply cognitive knowledge of political systems" (p.571). (Although seemingly straightforward, the distinction is a good warning for someone setting up a training programme). 


I think the most important conclusion in the article is that civic skill development happens when students are encouraged to organise themselves, to find out how to influence people and how to make collective decisions. This is why participation in high school government is almost unanimously found to be a good predictor of later political participation (she even claims with some conviction that this is not just due to self-selection of students who were already interested in politics), while sport clubs are negatively associated with later participation. Kirlin explains the latter:

While providing other benefits, organized sports provide little opportunity for civic skill development: the goal (winning) is predetermined, and adults undertake the planning for the season, organize the matches, and do most of the coaching. Opportunities for students to organise themselves, decide on objectives, and collectively make decisions are limited. The same may be increasingly true for service learning and community service: adults may have organized students too well, taking all the fun (and civic skill learning) out of the effort.  (p.573)

The point she makes here reminds me of something I read last November or so about mental health service users who organised themselves; initially they set up an emergency phone network for when staff wouldn't be available to call, so they could support one another; then that led to more and by now they have a walk-in service. I will try to find the source again tomorrow.

For now I would like to end today's post with a really cool thing from Kirlins's article - wish my university would offer this. In true Kirlin spirit I may go and suggest it to them.

I have begun testing this approach in an introductory undergraduate public affairs course. At the beginning of the term, students identify a public issue they would like to influence (by reading the local newspaper) and work in small (self-selected) groups to identify background, stakeholders, decision makers, and important timelines for the issues they have chosen. They then actively work to influence the outcome by writing letters, meeting with officials, attending and speaking at public meetings, and generating interest from others through media and other means. (...) Students have anecdotally reported increased understanding of the newspaper and local events, a much clearer understanding of who makes decisions and how to access them, and most importantly, confidence that they could get involved in an issue that interests them. (p. 574, my emphasis)