Learners' Democratic Participation
Democratic participation
By helping young people build the knowledge, confidence, skills and trust needed to understand and engage in politics, Digital Dialogue: Wales supports the foundations for future democratic engagement. While the programme is focused on these building blocks, we also saw encouraging signs that learners were becoming more open to getting involved—suggesting that meaningful political conversations can help spark interest and participation over time.
More likely to vote
The Dialogue sessions positively impacted participants' attitudes toward voting. Following the sessions, there was a 5% point increase in learners who felt a duty and responsibility to vote, rising from 49% to 54%, and a 11% point increase in the number of learners who knew how to register to vote and vote, rising from 28% to 39%
Percentage of Learners Who Believe They 'Should Vote and Know How To' Before and After the Programme
Motivation
93% of teachers agreed that their learners felt more motivated to engage with the democratic process because of Digital Dialogue: Wales. Emma Davies, a teacher at St John Baptist High School gave this example: “One learner who engaged in The Digital Dialogue with Mark Drakeford decided to set up and run a successful campaign in school to enrol learners on the electoral register and ran a mock election last summer.”
Percentage of Teachers Who Believe Learners Are 'More Motivated to Engage in the Democratic Process Due to the Programme
Positive change
While democratic participation wasn't an explicit aim of the programme, it was considered a desired longer-term outcome. We have seen that meaningful engagements with politicians lead to consistent, if small, positive changes to the likelihood of learners engaging in a range of different ways in democracy.
We see opportunities to pair this programme with other work that is explicitly designed to support voting and engagement, to boost engagement with elections, or with social action projects to boost everyday democratic participation.
