Most Americans fall into one of two lower-engagement camps when it comes to participating in public life, according to a new study released July 16 by the Pew Research Center. Americans’ engagement with others is not one-dimensional, according to the study from the Pew-Knight Initiative; researchers looked across a range of behaviors, political activity, civic involvement, religious attendance and attention to news, and found that U.S. adults sort into four distinct groups that reflect different patterns of participation.
How the study was built
The analysis draws on two Pew Research Center surveys. The main data source is the Cross-Sectional Engagement Survey, fielded July 9 to Dec. 5, 2025, among 5,393 adults. People could respond online, on paper or by telephone, and researchers reached out multiple times to people who did not initially respond.
SSRS conducted that survey using address-based sampling and a multimode protocol. The survey was fielded from July 9 to Dec. 5, 2025. Participants were first mailed an invitation to complete an online survey, and a paper survey was later mailed to those who did not respond. In total, 2,705 respondents completed the survey online, 2,500 completed the paper survey, and 188 completed the survey over the phone, for a total of 5,393.
Drawing on that data, researchers used cluster analysis to sort Americans into four engagement groups based on the ways they take part in public life, performing the analysis based on 19 measures of participation across the range of activities covered. They used Gower’s distance, a statistical method that computes how similar or different people are based on their answers.
The survey explored a range of behaviors, including political activity, civic involvement, religious attendance and attention to the news.
The four groups, defined
Mobilizers, the most engaged group, comprise just 9% of American adults. They volunteer, attend local government meetings, donate to political causes, follow the news closely and attend religious services at high rates. What sets them apart most clearly is their political action: they are by far the most likely to volunteer for campaigns and contact elected officials. Connectors, the largest group at 28% of adults, are also highly engaged in many ways, including joining groups and making donations, but are much less likely than Mobilizers to be heavily involved in political activities.
Spectators (31%) are much less likely than Mobilizers and Connectors to participate in civic or political activities, but they follow the news at similarly high rates. When they engage with news online, Spectators tend to do so by privately chatting about it or liking posts rather than publicly commenting or posting.
Outsiders (31%) participate at relatively low levels across the activities measured, including following the news. Still, they are not universally disengaged: 41% say they voted in 2024, and 24% attend religious services at least monthly.
Together, Spectators and Outsiders account for roughly 62% of U.S. adults, a pattern already noted by researchers tracking civic participation gaps across American life.
Age shapes which group Americans land in
Older Americans are more involved than younger adults in many traditional civic activities, such as voting, donating, attending religious services and following the news.
In contrast, younger Americans are more likely to be Spectators, those who follow the news and interact with it online but are less engaged in other aspects of public life. Nearly half of adults under 30 (46%) are classified as Spectators, compared with 19% of adults 65 and older.
Similar shares of younger and older adults fall into the most and least engaged groups. About one-in-ten Americans regardless of age are Mobilizers, while roughly three-in-ten are Outsiders. That consistency across generations underscores how the divide is less about age than about the type of engagement chosen, a dynamic that mirrors broader findings about habitual versus deliberate behavior in everyday life.
Engagement links to knowledge and community outlook
Half of Outsiders (50%) said they are not sure about at least one of four civic knowledge questions, compared with 15% of Mobilizers and 16% of Connectors. Only 41% of Outsiders correctly answered all four questions, versus majorities of Connectors (72%) and Mobilizers (68%).
A majority of Mobilizers (58%) say they are extremely or very interested in politics. Fewer than half of Connectors (43%) say the same, as do an even smaller share of Spectators (28%), and only 9% of Outsiders say they are highly interested in politics.
The least engaged Americans are the least likely to trust the news, though everybody doubts the fairness of news organizations.
The report from the Pew-Knight Initiative examines how Americans engage in public life across a range of activities, including politics, civic and community involvement, news consumption and religious participation. Researchers noted that these behaviors are often studied separately, making it difficult to see how they come together in people’s day-to-day lives; the study looks at them holistically to capture a fuller picture of the different profiles and patterns in how Americans do, and do not, engage civically.
Researchers deliberately designed the survey to reach people less likely to respond to typical polls, noting that those who are more engaged in public life are also more likely to take a survey in the first place. The survey was designed to capture hard-to-reach populations, and to maximize participation, all respondents were given the opportunity to take the survey online, on paper or by telephone, with multiple follow-up attempts for those who did not initially respond.
