Young people’s expectations to participate in legal and illegal activities to express their opinions: Findings from ICCS 2016

In reference to the theory of planned behaviour which links attitudes to action through intentions (Ajzen, 2001; Ajzen, & Fishbein, 2000), the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) 2016 (Schulz et al., 2018) measured students’ intentions to engage in the future and developed items measuring students’ beliefs about their likelihood of civic engagement in the future. This paper focuses on young people’s expectations to participate in legal or illegal activities (as “unconventional” forms of engagements) to express their opinions. This paper uses data from 14 European countries that participated in the recent IEA study ICCS 2016 to explore the following research questions: 1. To which extent are students expecting to participate in legal or illegal protest activities? 2. Which effects do factors related to resource, recruitment networks and psychological engagement have on students’ expected participation in legal and illegal activities? 3. Which are the associations between factors related to beliefs about the importance of citizenship behaviours (conventional, social movement related, or personally responsible citizenship) on students’ expected participation in activities to express their opinions?