What Do Adolescents Think About Democracy?
On June 26, 2026, Prof. Hermann Josef Abs and Merve Uyar from the ICCS team manned a booth at Science Summer in downtown Essen. The goal: to bring research to life and engage in conversation with citizens.
At three interactive stations, interested visitors could learn more about large international studies such as ICCS. Particularly popular was the “flip-over ICCS Q&A station“: Here, visitors could first share their own guesses in response to questions printed on cards and then turn the cards over to see what the ICCS study’s results actually revealed. With the exception of the teenage visitors, many participants were surprised to learn that young people place significantly less trust in social media than is generally expected.
A second station focused on the international perspective of ICCS. Using various translations of an English questionnaire item, it became clear how challenging it is to adapt questions linguistically and culturally so that they retain a comparable meaning across different countries and cultures.
The third station was designed to illustrate the amount of work that goes into an international comparative study such as ICCS. A poster guided visitors through the various phases of ICCS – from the decision to conduct the study to the publication of the results. In addition, visitors could look into a class schedule to see what a survey day is like for participating students.
The many conversations at the booth demonstrated the interest in young people’s perspectives and in research on democracy education. The Science Summer proved to be a great opportunity to engage with people and provide insights into the work of ICCS.