Assistant Professor, Michael Strawbridge, has published a new article in the journal Politics, Groups, and Identities titled, "Let’s spin the block: reviving and advancing research on Black political socialization." The article looks at the relationship between Black social networks and institutions as socializing agents within Black community. Strawbridge uses multiple sources and an item response theory model to resolve the lack of consensus between the two groups.

Read the abstract below and the full article on the Politics, Groups, and Identities website.

Abstract:

Black political socialization is a foundational yet simultaneously underdeveloped concept in Black political behavior research. A fundamental limitation of this literature is inconsistent measurement strategy, as there is no consensus regarding the relationship between Black social networks and institutions as socializing agents within the Black community. To resolve this issue, I use four sources of nationally representative Black public opinion survey data from 1979 to 2024 and an item response theory model to demonstrate that the survey items scholars commonly use as individual measures of racial socialization capture the same latent concept. While scholars more commonly focus on individual Black social networks and institutions to measure Black political socialization, my analysis reveals the viability of a multidimensional measure consistent with the original concept’s definition.