This article tackles the question whether it is a viable strategy to conduct online surveys among university students in developing countries. By documenting the methodology of the National Service Scheme Survey conducted in Ghana, we set out to answer three questions: (1) How can a sample of university students be obtained? (2) How can students be motivated to cooperate in online surveys? (3) What kind of devices do students use for completing an online survey? Our results indicate that online strategies can be very useful to reach this particular target group, if the necessary precautions are taken.
The engagement of participants in mandatory national youth service programs is a potentially important, but often neglected factor in understanding why these programs do or do not achieve their intended outcomes. This study examines the engagement of prospective participants in national service by testing competing theoretical frameworks on motivations for volunteering. Specifically, we examine motivational, institutional, and group identity theories and apply them to a mandatory national service program in a non-Western context: Ghana’s National Service Scheme (NSS). We analyze data from an online survey among almost 3,000 university students who are prospective NSS participants. Results indicate that the motivational perspective is very useful to understand engagement in mandatory community service in developing countries. In addition, the institutional and group identity perspectives are found to be complementary to this motivational perspective.
This study has been prepared within the UNU-WIDER project on 'Discrimination and affirmative actions-what have we learnt so far?', which is part of a larger research project on 'Disadvantaged groups and social mobility'.
Summary Welcome to the club? A comparative analysis of the relation between integration policy and welfare chauvinism.This article contributes to research on welfare chauvinism, i.e. the opinion that access to social security should be granted exclusively
to people who belong to the own ethnic-cultural group. Whereas previous research has focused mainly on individual explanations for welfare chauvinism, such as education or authoritarianism, the current paper scrutinizes the relationship between national policy ‐ and more specifically
integration policy ‐ and welfare chauvinism. For this purpose, we use three theoretical frameworks that lead to opposing hypotheses. Ethnic competition theory, on the one hand, suggests that more generous integration policies can induce welfare chauvinistic attitudes in the native population,
whereas policy feedback and policy responsiveness mechanisms, on the other, predict that a more generous integration policy could lead to a decrease in welfare chauvinism. To test these hypotheses, we use data from the European Social Survey (ESS) and the Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX)
for 23 European countries. The results support policy feedback and policy responsiveness. More generous integration policies go hand in hand with lower levels of welfare chauvinism.
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