Scholars have long been interested in who does and does not participate in the voluntary social and political activities that are a fundamental part of American life. This study attends to this topic at a time in contemporary society when individuals are more active and the ways in which they participate have expanded considerably. Despite this heightened activity vast disparities exist in the effectiveness with which certain groups - - the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, women, immigrants - - are entering the participatory system. Of central concern in this investigation is a focus on these groups in order to understand better whose interests are represented and whose ignored by the major social and political institutions. By analyzing the process by which some citizens become active while others do not, the researchers may generate practical knowledge for dealing with the gap between democratic ideals of equal representation and reality. The investigators will undertake a carefully crafted and comprehensive empirical study, one of the main purposes of which will be to develop a data resource on participation in American life. In order to obtain a representative sample of politically active respondents, the investigators will conduct a telephone screener survey of approximately ten minutes in length with 15,000 respondents. This will be followed by a sixty minute face-to-face interview with 2,000 respondents that is weighted toward activists. This research design will allow the researchers to screen for, and interview, enough minorities and highly active participators to achieve maximum reliability and validity of results. The output of this research will yield important findings about who participates in political activities and should provide the most detailed description of American political behavior ever available. The investigation will also produce a much more theoretical and nuanced picture of American political and voluntary activity.
