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What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change?

What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change?
What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change?
What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change? While research shows that obtaining a degree tends to make students more socially liberal, little is known about what drives this effect. We address this ‘how’ question by testing the socialisation-based mechanisms through which university study may shift attitudes; combining individual-level panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel with university- and constituency-level data about where respondents studied to estimate sub-group effects. Our results suggest that students tend to shift their attitudes subtly in a leftward and liberal direction whilst at university, but that this average effect is larger for: those who graduate younger, who study STEM and other non-HSS subjects (social attitudes only), who move away from home to study, who attend single campus institutions, and who live in ‘university towns’ and ‘cosmopolitan London’ while studying (all economic attitudes only). Overall, we find evidence to suggest that the socialisation experiences individuals are exposed to while studying have important shaping effects on their attitudes.
0261-3794
Simon, Elizabeth
671eefff-164c-4c25-9512-b6966b6074f9
Devine, Daniel
6bfa5a27-1b58-4c61-8eb0-a7a40860a4ae
Furlong, Jamie
e28973a9-e6ad-414a-954b-15848a945446
Simon, Elizabeth
671eefff-164c-4c25-9512-b6966b6074f9
Devine, Daniel
6bfa5a27-1b58-4c61-8eb0-a7a40860a4ae
Furlong, Jamie
e28973a9-e6ad-414a-954b-15848a945446

Simon, Elizabeth, Devine, Daniel and Furlong, Jamie (2025) What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change? Electoral Studies, 95, [102930]. (doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102930).

Record type: Article

Abstract

What drives the link between university study and attitudinal change? While research shows that obtaining a degree tends to make students more socially liberal, little is known about what drives this effect. We address this ‘how’ question by testing the socialisation-based mechanisms through which university study may shift attitudes; combining individual-level panel data from the British Election Study Internet Panel with university- and constituency-level data about where respondents studied to estimate sub-group effects. Our results suggest that students tend to shift their attitudes subtly in a leftward and liberal direction whilst at university, but that this average effect is larger for: those who graduate younger, who study STEM and other non-HSS subjects (social attitudes only), who move away from home to study, who attend single campus institutions, and who live in ‘university towns’ and ‘cosmopolitan London’ while studying (all economic attitudes only). Overall, we find evidence to suggest that the socialisation experiences individuals are exposed to while studying have important shaping effects on their attitudes.

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Accepted/In Press date: 27 March 2025
e-pub ahead of print date: 7 April 2025
Published date: 7 April 2025

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 500160
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/500160
ISSN: 0261-3794
PURE UUID: 3e73a607-58d9-432f-9572-61f5da1b33b8
ORCID for Daniel Devine: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0335-1776

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Date deposited: 22 Apr 2025 16:40
Last modified: 03 Sep 2025 02:00

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Contributors

Author: Elizabeth Simon
Author: Daniel Devine ORCID iD
Author: Jamie Furlong

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