Appendix B: Description of the Civic Culture Landscape Survey

To support the efforts of the Defining Civic Culture Working Group, the Aspen Institute’s Citizenship and American Identity Program (CAI) and Citizen University (CU) partnered with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to conduct research on how practitioners in the field define the term civic culture, how they implement their definition of civic culture through their programs, and what is and is not working in building a healthy civic culture. As part of this research, in March 2023, CAI and CU surveyed sixty-two practitioners on the topic of civic culture. This research was supported by the New Pluralists.
 

Selected Questions
 

• How do you define civic culture? If your organization does work with a single definition of civic culture, please share this definition. 
• In your own words, what is a healthy civic culture (as opposed to an unhealthy civic culture)?
• Is building a healthy civic culture a key goal of your work?
• What is broken, unhealthy, and/or maladaptive about the civic culture of the United States and of your part of the country right now?
• What are some barriers to building a healthy civic culture (either nationally, or in your part of the country)?
• What are some best practices to promote healthy civic culture?
• To what extent does your work support the types of best practices that you named above?
• When you think of organizations or practitioners who are successful in their work to promote/strengthen civic culture, who comes to mind? Please specify names below.
• Do you think there are important differences between efforts targeting civic culture and efforts targeting political culture?
• To what extent do you believe that pluralism is part of a healthy civic culture?
• When you measure the impact of your work, do you specifically assess your impact on civic culture?
• What tools do you or might you use to measure your impact on civic culture?