A debate over whether citizens are withdrawing from public life has been ongoing in the literature. Some contend that civic engagement has declined over the last few decades while others argue that, rather than a decline, we are experiencing a shift toward the "civic" side in how citizens choose to participate, a pattern particularly evident in today's young people. If the future of our democracy relies on both the civic and political involvement of its citizens, then such a shift could signal a change in citizen voice in and ability to influence the political system as today's young people become responsible for tomorrow's society.

This study supports the latter argument in that it suggests that, at the very least, the way in which civic engagement has been defined and measured has impacted perceptions about the level of citizen participation. Using a secondary analysis of an existing data set to examine the levels of civic and political activity among Arizona youth, this study also finds evidence of this "shift" toward civic participation. A factor analysis also expands on one of the principal themes that is emerging in the literature on citizen participation, which is the notion that civic engagement is multidimensional, encompassing a broad spectrum of activities that fall into distinct dimensions of behavior and thus requires new ways of thinking about how we approach the study of civic engagement.

Cross-tabulation and correlational analyses provided insight into not only the characteristics of those who do and do not participate as a whole but also shows that several of these characteristics vary from one dimension of engagement to another. Based on these results, this study argues that rather than narrowing the focus of a study to only certain categories of activity or attempting to collapse the various dimensions into one overall measure, it is more important to pay attention to what is unique about each dimension in order to gain a better understanding of who participates and how and why they do so. These differences, although subtle, may be most important in understanding how to encourage and stimulate particular types of participation.