The detachment between young people and politics is a common assumption in the political studies community, based on the usual young people’s lower electoral turnout and residual affiliation in political parties measured by survey data. When qualitative methodologies are used, the scenario of young people’s political participation and meanings attributed to it turns richer and diversified (O’Toole 2003, Pickard 2019). This difference among young people’s political engagement practices was measured and confirmed using a sample of young people in Portugal in 2012-13 (1200 questionnaires/60 interviews), demonstrating a low political engagement when quantitatively measured in contrast with a plural participation when qualitatively observed. The qualitative data on political participation was subject to a thematical analysis followed by a crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis procedure (Ragin 2017), revealing rich and complex sets of engagements between young people and politics, later enriched and clarified with sociodemographic data and illustrative quotes from the interviews. This aims to contribute to the discussions on the limitations of survey data among specific subjects and segments of the population, on the conceptual and methodological shortcomings on quantitative measures of political engagement among young people, and finally on the development of new procedures aimed to enhance classical data analysis.

--

young people,engagement,politics,quantitative,qualitative,methodologies

• Sociology - Social Sciences