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Political Behavior
Published in: Political Behavior 2/2013

01-06-2013 | Original Paper

Do All Associations Lead to Lower Levels of Ethnocentrism? A Two-Year Longitudinal Test of the Selection and Adaptation Model

Authors: Marc Hooghe, Ellen Quintelier

Published in: Political Behavior | Issue 2/2013

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Abstract

Within the literature on the relation between membership in voluntary associations and tolerance, three theoretical perspectives can be distinguished. The socialization perspective assumes that the interaction within association leads to higher levels of tolerance; the self-selection perspective suggests that tolerant actors are more likely to join associations; while the selection and adaption model predicts that the group culture within an association will have a specific effect on members’ attitudes. We use a two-year panel study among Belgian adolescents to ascertain the empirical merits of these three approaches. Results show that not all associations have an effect on the reduction of prejudice, but that this effect is limited to specific associations. A structural equation model furthermore suggests that socialization effects are significantly stronger than self-selection effects. As such, this analysis of panel data lends support to the selection and adaptation model.
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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
On average, respondents that were reached again in the same school, were more active and more tolerant than those who responded by mail. This does not necessarily point to method effects, however, since the adolescents that were contacted at school again do have different background characteristics (they did not switch schools, they were present at the school, and they progressed in a normal manner from the 4th to the 6th grade of high school (10th and 12th grade in the US system) in two years time).
 
2
In an additional analysis, we also allowed for multiple memberships but this did not lead to different results.
 
3
This measurement also taps the socio-economic status of the respondent. The advantage of this proxy-variable is that it has very few missing cases, which is not the case for more obvious operationalizations like the education level of the mother and/or the father. An alternative analysis using this indicator of socio-economic status led to similar but weaker effects.
 
4
Additional controls were implemented for school type and language (French or Dutch) of the respondent, but these did not lead to significant results (results available from the authors).
 
5
It proved to be impossible to perform a reliable factor analyses on the associations, as associational membership was measured using a dummy variable and most associations had only a low percentage of members. Despite the fact that not all associations loaded on the same factor, correlations still proved too high to include them all simultaneously into one analysis, as this led to multicollinearity.
 
6
Other operationalizations of ‘ethnic minority group’ were tried too, but the strongest delineation of this group proved to be to have both parents being born inside the European Union.
 
7
Especially the membership of an ‘ethnic group’ might seem counterintuitive in this regard. It has to be noted, however, that this effect remains robust even among those respondents where both parents were born in Belgium. In practice, therefore, this groups refers to associations that are focused on non-European cultures etc., and they do not refer to any effort to strengthen or confirm ethnic identity of the members.
 
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Metadata
Title
Do All Associations Lead to Lower Levels of Ethnocentrism? A Two-Year Longitudinal Test of the Selection and Adaptation Model
Authors
Marc Hooghe
Ellen Quintelier
Publication date
01-06-2013
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Political Behavior / Issue 2/2013
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-012-9201-5

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