College Students and Community Service: Who, With Whom, and Why?

Abstract

The community service volunteer vs. nonvolunteer status of 124 college students was examined in relation to motivation, gender, extraversion‐introversion, and social anxiety. Volunteers and female students were hypothesized to have higher levels of motivation to participate than were nonvolunteers and males, and to have higher levels of interest in volunteering. The data for volunteer status and gender were significant only with respect to interest in volunteering, with volunteers and females significantly more interested in volunteering than were nonvolunteers and males. Gender differences were also found for volunteering style preference and participation within particular volunteer groups. Volunteers were also hypothesized to have lower levels of extraversion and higher levels of social anxiety than nonvolunteers because socially anxious introverts were thought to seek the anxiety‐reducing structure of a volunteer activity. This hypothesis was not supported.

The Effects of Race, Gender, and Marital Status on Giving and Volunteering in Indiana

“…In general, national survey data and bivariate results show that women volunteer more than men (e.g., Hodgkinson, Weitzman, Noga, & Gorski, 1992;Independent Sector, 2001). This finding appears to be consistent across age groups (Gallagher, 1994;O'Brien et al, 1994;Trudeau & Devlin, 1996). Other empirical research indicates that gender makes a difference depending on the variable being measured-such as the amount of time and frequency of volunteering, (Chambre, 1984;Gallagher, 1994;Rosenthal et al, 1998;Todd, Davis, & Cafferty, 1984), motives for volunteering (Maslanka, 1993;Trudeau & Devlin, 1996), interest in volunteering (Trudeau & Devlin, 1996), leadership roles (Thompson, 1995), the nature of the institution (Schlozman, Burns, & Verba, 1994), and volunteer commitment (Lammers, 1991).…”

The role of social anxiety in volunteering

“…On the other hand, based on a sample of 123 students, Trudeau and Devlin (1996) suggested that volunteer populations are diverse, including individuals with varying levels of extra-introversion.…”

The behavioural consequences of self‐congruency in volunteers

“…There are a great number of studies in the literature that focus on identifying the volunteers' motivations. [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38] These studies reveal the existence of different types of motivation, which can be classified into four categories in line with the outline proposed by Lynch: 29 -the good of society, which basically means helping others for people to apply to participate in an NGO; instead, it is necessary to activate the mechanisms to recruit volunteers through marketing practices, especially when bearing in mind that, although the work of the voluntary sector is growing, the number of people volunteering is not increasing at a comparable rate. 16 Moreover, if it is supposed that there is a relationship of exchange between the volunteer and the NGO, then the success of that relationship hinges on the mutual satisfaction of volunteer and organisational needs, 15,[17][18][19][20] with the NGO having to see where a volunteer best fits into the structure and work of the group.…”