Political Socialization: Describe Your Political Socialization

Personal Political Profile

This assignment asks you to reflect on your own political thinking in a structured way. It puts you in the position of both subject and political scientist. By looking at yourself as a political scientist would, you will learn more about yourself and about public opinion. This assignment challenges you to analyze your own political thinking with concepts and techniques used by public opinion scholars.

This profile requires that you understand concepts from the class by applying the concepts to yourself. You will need to describe yourself andcompare yourself to the “norm” using information from the textbook and various polls. The assignment specifically asks youto think about five concepts essential to understanding public opinion.

Political Socialization: Describe your political socialization.

• Evaluate the different agents of socialization and their impact on you.
• How is it similar or different from the norm described in the textbook or in a recent opinion poll?
• What explains these similarities and differences?
• What is your first political memory?

Party Identification: Identify your party identification.

• Why and how do you think you have formed your political party identification (or lack thereof)?
• How strong do you think you political party identification is and do you think it will remain consistent
• Compare yourself to the American public using recent poll data.

Political Trust: Evaluate your level of trust in political institutions, politicians and policies.

• Why do you think you have come to trust or not trust political institutions, actors and policies?
• What has influenced your level of political trust?
• How do you compare to the American public at large? Use recent polling data.

Political Efficacy: Describe your level of political efficacy.

• What is the source of these feelings and what might change them?
• How efficacious is the American public and how do you compare to the average American?

Political Ideology: Take the online political ideology surveys in class (links on class website).

• What is your ideology and typology group? Does this describe you accurately?
• Is it consistent with your political party identification? Why or why not?
• Did you get the result on the Idealog that you thought you would?

• You identify your political socialization process and make some general comparisons to the norm.
• Demonstrates understanding of the political socialization process and the agents and their impacts.
• Explains how political events or personal characteristics differentiate your experiences and socialization.

• You identify your political socialization process & make some general comparisons to the norm.
• Demonstrates understanding of the political socialization process and the agents and their Simpacts.

• You identify your political socialization process and make some general comparisons to the norm.

• You reflect on your party (or lack of) identification and can explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
• Demonstrates understanding of party affiliation and you compare yourself to the public.
• Incorporates recent polling data and might also incorporate concepts such as partisanship, de-alignment, realignment and ticket-splitting etc...

• You reflect on your party (or lack of) identification and can explain how you arrived at that conclusion.
• Demonstrate understanding of party affiliation & compare yourself to the public.

• You reflect on your party (or lack of) identification and can explain how you arrived at that conclusion.

• You assess your level of political trust and in institutions, actors and policies using concrete examples.
• You use recent polling data to compare yourself to the public.
• You can identify the sources of your attitudes and understand the implications.

• You assess your level of political trust and in institutions, actors and policies using concrete examples.
• You use recent polling data to compare yourself to the public.

• You assess your level of political trust and in institutions, actors and policies using concrete examples.

• Demonstrate understanding of political efficacy and can identify your level of political efficacy using concrete examples.
• You show understanding of ways political efficacy is measured and how you compare to the public.
• You explore the sources of political efficacy or lack thereof, and speculate on what might change those feelings.

• Demonstrate understanding of political efficacy and can identify your level of political efficacy using concrete examples.
• Show understanding of ways efficacy is measured and how you compare to the public.

• Demonstrate understanding of political efficacy &can identify your level of political efficacy using concrete examples.

• You complete the typology group and idealog surveys and can identify your ideology and assess the accuracy of the description using concrete examples.
• You discuss the relationship between ideology and political party identification.
• You compare yourself to the public using polling data.

• You complete the typology group and idealog surveys and can identify your ideology and assess the accuracy of the description using concrete examples.
• You discuss the relationship between ideology and political party identification.

• You complete the typology group and idealog surveys and can identify your ideology and assess the accuracy of the description using concrete examples.

• Communicates effectively using standard mechanics and conventions. Few or no errors.
• Strong personal voice. You owned this essay

• Communicates effectively using standard mechanics and conventions. Minor errors are not distracting.

• Could communicate more clearly. Errors are distracting and/or detract from understanding your essay.

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