A new Pew Research Center study from the Pew-Knight Initiative, released July 16, looked across a range of behaviors, political activity, civic involvement, religious attendance and attention to news, and found that, rather than falling along a single spectrum, U.S. adults sort into four distinct groups that reflect different patterns of participation.
The report offers the most integrated picture yet of how everyday Americans show up, or don’t, across politics, community life, religion and news.
How the four groups were identified
The analysis draws on two Pew Research Center surveys, with the main data source being the Cross-Sectional Engagement Survey fielded July 9 to Dec. 5, 2025, among 5,393 adults.
SSRS conducted the survey for Pew using address-based sampling and a multimode protocol. 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. Researchers reached out multiple times to those who did not initially respond.
Drawing on that data, researchers used cluster analysis to sort Americans into four engagement groups based on 19 measures of participation across the range of activities mentioned above.
Mobilizers, Connectors, Spectators and Outsiders
Mobilizers, who make up just 9 percent of American adults, are the most active across all the different areas. They volunteer, attend local government meetings, donate to political causes, follow the news closely and attend religious services at high rates.
Mobilizers are also the group most likely to express negative feelings about the state of the country, even as they report relatively positive views of their own local communities.
The Connector group, at 28 percent of all adults, is involved in many ways, centering on community life, charitable giving and religious attendance. A further 31 percent are classified as Spectators, who are much less likely than Mobilizers and Connectors to participate in civic or political activities, but follow the news at similarly high rates.
The remaining 31 percent, labeled Outsiders, participate at relatively low levels across the activities measured in this study, including following the news. Still, they are not universally disengaged: 41 percent say they voted in 2024, and 24 percent attend religious services at least monthly.
As GCN has previously reported, a related Pew civic engagement study also found that most Americans fall into the less-active spectator or outsider categories, underscoring how concentrated active public participation tends to be.
Age divides the groups more sharply than party
Older adults are more likely to participate in long-standing civic activities like voting, donating money or attending religious services, while younger adults are more likely to engage online, including by liking or privately sharing news content.
Older Americans are more likely than younger adults to be Connectors, who tend to participate in civic and community life. About four-in-ten people ages 65 and older (43 percent) are in this group, almost three times the share of adults ages 18 to 29 (15 percent).
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.
There are only modest differences between Republicans and Democrats in terms of who falls into each of the four engagement groups. For example, Connectors make up a slightly larger share of the Republican Party than the Democratic Party, while the reverse is true for Spectators. Members of both parties engage, or don’t, in a variety of ways.
What higher engagement actually means for civic knowledge
The differences across engagement groups are evident when looking at all four political knowledge questions together. Half of Outsiders (50 percent) said they were not sure about the answer to at least one question, compared with 15 percent of Mobilizers and 16 percent of Connectors. Only 41 percent of Outsiders were able to correctly answer all four questions, versus majorities of Connectors (72 percent) and Mobilizers (68 percent).
Americans who participate more in public life are more interested in politics and more likely to have positive feelings about the state of their local communities, the study found.
The pattern echoes broader findings on civic participation gaps that researchers have tracked across American communities for years.
The report is a Pew Research Center publication from the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The full report, including methodology, topline data and detailed tables, is available at Pew Research Center’s website.
