Voluntary Social Participation and Health

Abstract

The importance of participation in voluntary formal associations for enhancing health is supported by four kinds of evidence. (1) Seven prospective studies of social relations and mortality show the independent effect of formal social participation, net of informal ties. (2) Conceptual analysis demonstrates that voluntary formal associations constitute a separate class of social causation. (3) Our factor analysis of data from a sample of 629 nonmetropolitan elderly identified two types of formal social participation: "instrumental," as in associations that are community oriented, and "expressive," as in those that exist for the benefit of the members. (4) Regression analysis showed that the instrumental participation factor is linked, net of controls, to the perceived health of both men and women, whereas the expressive factor predicts for women only.

Inventory and analysis of definitions of social participation found in the aging literature: Proposed taxonomy of social activities

“…To some extent, social participation is a process that reflects age, sex, and the sociocultural identity of the person and necessitates adjustment to social and cultural norms. As highlighted by some definitions, social participation can be influenced by political (Young & Glasgow, 1998;Mars et al, 2008), economic (Mendes de Leon et al, 2003) and community contexts. Social participation involves choices by the person, coherent and consistent with his/her identity.…”

Social participation as an indicator of successful aging: an overview of concepts and their associations with health

“…57 It has been defined as an activity in the context of a community organisation with a name and explicit purposes. 16 Such behaviour has also been referred to as civic engagement 13 or formal social participation. 16 Research typically measures volunteering by asking older adults to indicate how many volunteer organisations they are a member of, or how many hours they devote to volunteer roles over a given time period.…”

“…16 Such behaviour has also been referred to as civic engagement 13 or formal social participation. 16 Research typically measures volunteering by asking older adults to indicate how many volunteer organisations they are a member of, or how many hours they devote to volunteer roles over a given time period. 58 These questions are often combined into a composite measure of social participation with the informal social participation activities described above.…”

“…A potential shortcoming of such research is we are then unable to determine the separate effects of activities engaged in for enjoyment versus those that have the goal of improving some aspect of community life. 16 …”

“…10,11 Despite the research interest in social participation, the concept suffers from a lack of conceptual clarity. There are multiple concepts that are either used to describe aspects of or used interchangeably with the term 'social participation', including volunteering, 12 civic engagement, 13 community engagement, 14 community participation, 15 formal social participation 16 and social engagement. 10 The lack of consensus on a definition of social participation results in communication difficulties for those using the concept, problems in the development and selection of instruments to measure social participation, difficulties comparing results across studies and potentially ineffective social policy efforts.…”