High school students' opinion about disengaging arguments that can be possibly considered for defining electoral vote

• Grant number: 15/26265-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: March 01, 2016
• End date: February 28, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Roberta Gurgel Azzi
• Grantee: Caroline Ribeiro Ferreira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project is part of a larger study entitled Youth and Politics: discussions from the Theory of social learning. It basically investigates what high school students from public schools think about disengaging arguments that are used as possible justifications for electoral vote definition. The disengaging arguments that are going to be analyzed are associated with corruption and vote selling. Theoretically, they refer to the mechanisms of moral disengagement, which was developed by Albert Bandura in the Social Cognitive Theory. The data will be collected from the Likert instrument, which was built to meet the larger survey's purposes, in which this proposal is part, also for socio-demographic nature questions. It will identify what students from different grades and ages think about disengaging arguments related to vote definition. 300 young students over 16 years old (to be completed until May 4th) and attending high school will participate in this survey. The results will be analyzed by using descriptive statistics and they might contribute to a better comprehension of youth thoughts about voting. It can also benefit the discussion of curricular issues related to democracy and election.