Developing a Digital and Traditional Political Participation (DTPP) Scale for Youth: A Validity and Reliability Study

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to develop and validate a political participation scale for youth, considering both traditional and digital political participation (DTPP). The research was conducted using 458 participants from Turkey, Italy, and Romania, aged between 15 and 29 years. Explanatory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were performed to test the structural validity of the scale. EFA results illustrated that scale consisted of three factors and the total variance was 61.23%. These factors were labeled as “digital political support”, “traditional political support” and “digital political following”. During confirmatory factor analysis, the three-factor structure was tested, and the resulting model produced an acceptable goodness of fit The scale consists of 39 items and the reliability coefficients for each subscale vary from .92 and .95. The results show that the scale is valid and reliable to measure traditional and digital political participation of young people.