The Challenge

The Electoral Commission engage with children and young people to educate them about democracy and voting. In recent years, it has expanded its engagement with this young audience through initiatives such as the “Welcome To Your Vote” campaign and they now have a dedicated team which provides educational materials to schools.

Whilst the Electoral Commission has conducted a significant amount of research with people of voting age, they identified a gap in their knowledge when it came to understanding levels of awareness and knowledge of UK politics and voting amongst younger audiences. With our expertise conducting research with children and young people, and the strength and experience our public sector team, they commissioned DJS Research to fill that gap through the provision of deep, actionable audience insight.

The core aims of this piece of research were to:

• Bridge gaps where there was limited research to date i.e. specifically the youngest age groups’ knowledge and attitudes towards voting and elections;
• Understand demographic variations in knowledge;
• Provide insights into how young people learn about politics;
• Identify gaps in knowledge to suggest how to enhance information that is currently provided.

By obtaining a deep understanding of how children and young people learn about politics, this insight could then be used to not only inform the content of future educational materials but to identify any needs for further, or different, resources to engage and educate this audience.

The Approach

To meet the objectives of the research, four phases of research took place, with a combined quantitative and qualitative research approach, among children and young people aged 11-25 across the UK.

The project brought together expertise from our dedicated public sector team, with DJS Research’s wealth of experience in conducting research with children and young people.

The research involved pre-consultation focus groups; cognitive depths; an online survey of over 2,500 children and young people (nationally representative, with boosts in the devolved nations), followed by a series further post-analysis focus groups.

The Results

The qualitative research conducted upfront proved invaluable to inform and test the survey design. This approach resulted in the creation of an online survey which was tailored exactly to meet the needs of this young audience both in terms of its content and relevance but also its accessibility, ensuring it could be understood by all the children and young people who were asked to complete it. 

The large, robust and representative sample of children and young people that completed the survey provided a rich data set, with boosts in the devolved nations (corrected by post-survey weights) meaning that we could conduct analysis at UK and national levels, as well as by demographics such as age and ethnicity.

The further, post-analysis, stage of qualitative groups then helped to tease out additional, more detailed ideas, understanding and implications from the survey results, which altogether generated a significant amount of insight to help steer the Electoral Commission in their plans to engage and educate children and young people about democracy and voting.

Testimonial

The research enabled us to produce a report that clearly highlighted the need for political education for children, aimed at MPs…Working with DJS was a great experience. I never had to chase them or worry about any issues with the research. Despite the complexity of the project, it was completed on time and within budget.”

Sandy Grant, The Electoral Commission