Peer-reviewed article
It’s Us Against Them Up There: Measuring Populism in Youth as a Multidimensional Concept
Elise Grunwald, Katharina Eckstein, Astrid Körner, Peter Noack ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5This study adapts an adult questionnaire on populist attitudes for use with young people. It was tested with 523 German participants aged 14 to 21. The questionnaire measures three dimensions: people-centrism, anti-elitism and a Manichean (good versus evil) outlook. The measure worked in a similar way across age groups. Stronger populist attitudes were linked to higher conspiracy mentality, lower political trust and lower satisfaction with democracy, and to more support for populist parties.
Key points
- Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-dimensional structure with satisfactory psychometric properties and full scalar invariance across age groups.
- Bifactor modeling showed that anti-elitism is the core element binding the three populism facets together.
- General populism had substantial associations with conspiracy mentality, moderate associations with authoritarianism, and strong negative associations with political trust and satisfaction with democracy.
- Each unit increase in general populist attitude doubled the odds of supporting populist parties (AfD, BSW).
- Gender and school track had additional significant effects on support for populist parties.
Limitations
The abstract describes a measurement and validation study with a German sample only, so it says nothing about other countries or about how populist attitudes change over time. It also does not evaluate any intervention or address children's well-being directly, and the sample extends to age 21, beyond childhood.
Abstract
Abstract Populism has emerged as a defining challenge for contemporary democracies, yet empirical research has largely overlooked younger populations during their critical phase of political development. This study examines populist attitudes among adolescents and young adults, addressing how this multidimensional construct manifests in youth and its implications for future research on youth populism. Drawing on a German sample of 523 participants aged 14 to 21, we adapted a validated adult measurement tool to assess three dimensions of populism: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and Manichean outlook. We tested scalar measurement invariance across age groups and employed bifactor modeling to distinguish general and specific components of populism. Validity was examined through associations with conspiracy mentality, authoritarianism, political trust, satisfaction with democracy, and voting intentions for populist parties. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-dimensional structure with satisfactory psychometric properties and full scalar invariance. Bifactor modeling revealed that anti-elitism serves as the core binding element of the three populism facets. The general populism factor showed substantial associations with conspiracy mentality, moderate associations with authoritarianism, and strong negative associations with political trust and satisfaction with democracy. Logistic regression analyses demonstrated that each unit increase in general populist attitude doubled the odds of supporting populist parties (AfD, BSW), with additional significant effects of gender and school track. The results support both the applicability and validity of the adapted instrument among youth and demonstrate that bifactor modeling offers a valuable approach for capturing populism's complexity as a multidimensional attitude comprising general and specific components.