Developing a common structure to measure civic participatory potential of Hong Kong and Taiwan adolescents

Hong Kong youth’ political passion during the Umbrella Movement in 2014 has expressed the world. So has that of their Taiwan counterparts who behaved more even radically in the Sunflower Movement earlier that year. Based on the practical evidence, the current study traces Hong Kong and Taiwan students’ early attitudes to civic participation back in 2009 when they were all Secondary Grade Two students. To examine whether the Taiwan students held similar attitudes to civic participation to their Hong Kong peers, a Confirmatory Factor Analysis will be done on the Hong Kong model with the Taiwan sample. To make further group comparisons, multiple-group CFA (MGCFA) will be conducted in steps while evaluating the across-group equivalence of the parameters of the measure model. The purpose is to test the possibility of constructing a non-invariant measurement structure across the two Chinese societies. A reliable and accurate structure as such is essential for theorizing the results of empirical studies and matching of them with the current facts. The data used will be drawn from the Hong Kong and Taiwan samples from the International Civics and Citizenship Education Study. The multiple measures of the civic participatory potential profiles include Legal Protest, Illegal Protest, and Conventional Citizenship activities.