The main objective of this paper was to describe the latest results of a longitudinal study carried out by our research team with a sample of social work volunteers, whose one-year follow-up has just been completed, allowing us to draw up what we have called the "Threestage model of volunteers' duration". Use of this model overcomes some of the apparent contradictions between the different models of volunteerism. For example, for the Functional Model, motivations, and more specifically their satisfaction, would be the best predictors of service duration, however, for the Role Identity Model, what best predicts service duration would be role identity. We assume that in the initial phase of volunteerism, motivations and their satisfaction are more closely related to service duration than role identity. Nevertheless, to predict longer duration of service and greater involvement, the fundamental variable is organizational commitment. Finally, the Role Identity Model is that which best explains sustained volunteerism. Instruments used included the Organizational Commitment Questionnaire (Mowday, Steers, & Porter, 1979) Keywords: volunteerism, service duration, motivations, satisfaction, organizational commitment, role identity, behavioral intention.Regarding volunteerism, there are two practical and important questions. First, how do you attract volunteers to join an organization? Second, how do you keep them for a long time? We address the second one because of the high drop-out SOCIAL

Adolescents tend to be much later chronotypes than other age groups. This circadian phase delay is attributed as much to biological as psychosocial factors. Because the consequences of this change on performance and health have been documented, questionnaires to identify morning and evening-type adolescents are necessary. The aim of the present study was to validate a Spanish version of the Morningness-Eveningness Scale for Children (MESC) by means of several relevant psychological variables as external criteria. A sample of 623 urban high school students completed the MESC and self-reported measures of sleep behaviors, subjective alertness, physical performance, and mood. On the whole, results indicate a good validity of MESC. Significant differences in the self-reported ratings between morning and evening types were obtained by time-of-day. These results provide preliminary support for the Spanish version of MESC.

This work has explored the socioemotional selectivity theory (Cartensen, 1995) with the purpose of evaluating how people selectively optimize their activities involving social investments as they increase in age, investing more in self-relevant and emotionally meaningful goals. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to test hypotheses derived from the socioemotional selectivity theory regarding the effects of age on motives for volunteering. The Volunteer Functions Inventory (Clary et al., 1998) was completed by 214 volunteers affiliated with different organizations. Results indicated that, as age increases, career, understanding and making friends volunteer motivations decrease, while social and values volunteer motivations increase. Possible implications for volunteer management in organizations are analyzed.

Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a prosocial activity with similarities to volunteerism. The purpose of this work is to contribute new evidence about the relevance to OCB of two models of sustained volunteerism, functional analysis and role identity theory. A total of 983 Spanish employees at 49 organizations completed surveys measuring amount of OCB, motives for engaging in citizenship behavior, and the degree to which respondents developed an organizational citizen role identity. The results showed that both motives and role identity were significant predictors of OCB, with motive partially mediating the role identity-OCB relationship. The findings suggest that similar mechanisms are involved in sustaining volunteerism and OCB.

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This work has explored the socioemotional selectivity theory (Cartensen, 1995) with the purpose of evaluating how people selectively optimize their activities involving social investments as they increase in age, investing more in self-relevant and emotionally meaningful goals. Specifically, the purpose of this study was to test hypotheses derived from the socioemotional selectivity theory regarding the effects of age on motives for volunteering. The Volunteer Functions Inventory (Clary et al., 1998) was completed by 214 volunteers affiliated with different organizations. Results indicated that, as age increases, career, understanding and making friends volunteer motivations decrease, while social and values volunteer motivations increase. Possible implications for volunteer management in organizations are analyzed.