The effect of volunteering and voluntary group membership on student's persistence

Abstract

In the literature on higher education, civic involvement is discussed in connection with civic education or as a protective factor against attrition. In a series of surveys, we have followed higher education students' volunteering at several higher education institutions of Central and Eastern Europe since 2005. Based on Wilson (2000), we distinguish between formal volunteering and volunteer work which does not require organizational membership. Among young people, volunteer work is rather a program-centered, personally motivated, and individual activity (Inglehart 2003). In this study, however, we also examine students' voluntary group membership, which could provide a potential framework for volunteer work. Through a stepwise linear regression model, we analyze the effect of volunteering and voluntary group membership on students' higher education persistence. The analysis is carried out on data from the PERSIST 2019 survey (N = 2199). We find that persistent academic progress is more common among women, individually well-off students from objectively less affluent families, those who pray regularly, those who have a close relationship with their parents, professors, and peers, and those have done volunteer work during their higher education studies.

The role of financial literacy for financial resilience in middle-age and older adulthood

“…Consequently, sociodemographic factors such as age (50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80þ), gender (man or woman), marital status (married and living together with spouse, registered partnership, married but living separated from spouse, never married, divorced or widowed), education attainment [the International Standard Classification of Education, version 1997 (ISCED-97) as available in the SHARE datasets], annual household income (logarithm), work status (retired, employed or self-employed, unemployed, permanently sick or disabled, homemaker and other) and country (Austria, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark, Greece, Switzerland, Belgium, Israel, Czechia and Poland) were included in the analyses. Previous research has also corroborated the role of lifestyle factors for health in the short term, which can directly translate into the financial situation in the long term (Bialowolski et al, 2021c;Bouchery et al, 2011;Chou et al, 2003;Holtermann et al, 2012;Pierce et al, 1994;Pusztai et al, 2021). Therefore, indicators such as BMI (underweight, normal weight, overweight and obese), alcohol consumption (almost every day, five or six days a week, three or four days a week, once or twice a week, once or twice a month, less than once a month, not at all in the last 6 months), sport activity requiring a moderate level of energy (more than once a week, once a week, one to three times a month, hardly ever or never) and volunteering (yes or no) were thus controlled for in order to capture the confounding role of life style for financial resilience that extends beyond financial literacy.…”

Exploring the Relational Embeddedness of Higher Educational Students During Hungarian Emergency Remote Teaching

“…Previous research measuring the impact of changes in intra-generational relationships on student persistence has reported mixed results as these student relationships usually encourage students to obtain a degree in some cases and the opposite in others (Pusztai, 2015;Kocsis and Pusztai, 2021;Pusztai et al, 2021). A decrease in relationships with peers outside the institution was also associated with decreased persistence, satisfaction and trust.…”

“…The integration of students in an institutional social environment has a key role in the success (Tinto, 1993(Tinto, , 2006. Students, who cannot connect to the institution through their contacts, usually build up networks of contacts outside the institution, which can also contribute to persistence, in particular links with external activities such as volunteering or study-related employment (Kocsis and Pusztai, 2020;Pusztai et al, 2021). However, these friendships outside the institution (intragenerational relationship outside the institution) do not always increase students' persistence in their studies.…”

Factors associated with community volunteering among adults over the age of 50 in Malaysia

“…The likelihood to volunteer among those with higher level of education and working were consistent with previous research that indicate volunteerism is facilitated by greater human capital. The higher the level of education one's received, the more likely they would participate as volunteer [26][27][28][29][30]. Education promotes volunteering by increasing awareness of concerns, building self-confidence, and having adequate literacy skills for information seeking [24,29].…”