A powerful rhetoric regarding the importance of adolescents’ civic engagement and political participation is common in contemporary societies, whilst citizens, both adolescent and adults, seem to express a growing scepticism and alienation regarding politics. Even if this disengagement is debatable, as there are simultaneous signs of an increasing involvement in a variety of emerging and broadly‐defined civic and political activities, we argue that the benefits of these experiences should be scrutinized using psychological evidence‐based criteria. We rest on classical contributions from developmental psychology, educational theory and political science to define criteria that could inform the quality of participation experiences, and then present two studies that explore its adequacy. Study 1 is a cross‐sectional study that observes that higher quality civic and political experiences are connected with more complex modes of thinking about politics. In Study 2, a two‐wave longitudinal design, the quality of participation experiences is a significant predictor of change patterns of political attitudes; moreover, results support the argument that participation is not good in itself and that some experiences, with lesser developmental quality, might have a detrimental effect on adolescents’ political development.

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The literature has recently raised the need to clarify the nature of psychological empowerment. There are theoretical and empirical evidences that this conceptualization may not be appropriate, and therefore other alternatives to the reflective measurement model should be considered. Consequently, serious problems may arise from the measurement model misspecification, undoubtedly compromising the development of empowerment theory and measurement. This empirical study constitutes an attempt to contribute to this debate, not only testing both reflective and formative models of psychological empowerment, to find the most appropriate modeling approach as a higher‐order multidimensional construct, but also validating a measure that assesses cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and relational components in a Portuguese youth community‐organizing context (N = 861). Confirmatory tetrad analyses results suggest a formative operationalization of psychological empowerment construct. These findings are supported by additional theoretical and empirical considerations. Additionally, the 46‐item index for measure psychological empowerment reveals satisfactory psychometric properties.

This article considers participation experiences of 14 year-old and upper secondary students in six European countries that were involved in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Civic Education Study: the Czech Republic, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland, countries that vary in their history of institution of democratic regimes. Participation has been considered as a crucial dimension of citizenship, and experiences within civil society are viewed as a relevant opportunity for developing personal and social resources essential for the survival and expansion of democracy. Additionally, participation experiences in adolescence seem to be a good predictor of political engagement during adult life. Results show that participation is most evident in organisations that provide enrichment activities (sports, music, computers), but both 14 year-old and upper secondary students are involved in voluntary activities, in some civic-related organisations (mainly Scouts, religious affiliated and environmental), and in experiences within the school (with student councils and school newspapers at the top). However, cross-national and cross-age variations are significant. Overall, there seems to be a positive impact of the frequency of students' involvement on civic concepts, attitudes and engagement, but results also reveal that more is not necessarily better. The most relevant implication for the development of citizenship education projects is that 'action' can be a powerful learning tool but only if it is intentionally designed and systematically supported: the quality of participation experiences, both in terms of meaningful involvement, of interaction with (different) others, and opportunities for personal integration, is therefore crucial if the goal is to promote the personal empowerment and social pluralism on which the essence of democracy relies.

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Place identity, Sense of community, University students,