Date Presented 4/20/2018
Motivations for volunteering were examined among 46 volunteers in an adaptive skiing program. Volunteers were motivated by personal values, understanding children, and enhancing knowledge. Findings can be used to promote volunteerism in adapted sports programs.
Primary Author and Speaker: Martha Sanders
Contributing Authors: Daniel Arcement, Victoria Lo, Nick Mills, Brittany Hall
PURPOSE: Occupational therapy practitioners recognize the value of adapted sports for players and the importance of volunteers to sustain such programs. Thus, understanding volunteers’ motivations for volunteering is critical to recruiting and retaining volunteers for adapted programs and to ensuring that programs meet the needs of both players and volunteers. Information on volunteering further informs and expands our understanding of the occupation of volunteering across the lifespan. The purpose of this study was to understand the motivations and outcomes of volunteering for 46 volunteers in the Skier’s Unlimited program, an 8-wk adapted skiing program for children with disabilities aged 5–19. The research question was, What are the personal and professional motivators for volunteers in an adaptive skiing program?
METHOD: Inclusion criteria for study participants were being a volunteer for at least one season in the Skiers Unlimited program and being able to read English. The study had a nonexperimental survey design in which participants were recruited through a weekly email sent to all volunteers. At the final ski session, participants completed a demographics questionnaire and the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI), which assesses motivations to volunteer and outcomes of volunteering. The VFI has a Likert-type response scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) addressing six functional motives for volunteering: personal values (altruism, humanitarianism), understanding (knowledge, skills, abilities), enhancement (personal growth, confidence, self-efficacy), career (networking, experience), social (social ties), and protective (emotional health, coping). Outcomes are assessed using the same categories and general questions on overall satisfaction and intent to volunteer in the future. Follow-up survey reminders were sent 2 wk after initial administration.
Results were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 23 (IBM Corp., Armonk, NY). Descriptive statistics were used for demographic data and summary ranking of VFI scores. Student’s t tests were used to compare responses between experienced (long-term) and student volunteers.
RESULTS: The 42 participants (M age = 33, range = 18–77; 54% female) had volunteered from 1 to 31 yr, including 71% (n = 30) for 1–3 yr and 29% (n = 12) for ≥6 yr (four did not respond). Motivators were ranked as follows (out of 35): personal values, 31.76; understanding, 27.62; enhancement, 23.70; social, 21.51; career, 19.38; and protective, 18.32. Student volunteers reported significantly higher career (p = .021), understanding (p = .022), enhancement (p = .031), and protective (p = .026) motivators than experienced volunteers. The outcomes rankings indicated that participants were satisfied with the overall volunteer experience (32.48 out of 35). The outcomes were ranked as follows (out of 14): personal, 12.50; understanding, 11.08; social, 10.54; enhancement, 9.65; career, 7.56; and protective, 7. There were no significant differences in outcome rankings between student and experienced volunteers.
CONCLUSION: The results suggest that all volunteers were satisfied with the program and met expectations for personal values, understanding children, and socialization outcomes. Motivation for enhancement (self-efficacy) was high but ranked lower in outcomes. Findings indicate that the volunteer program may have bolstered opportunities to experience self-efficacy with skiers. For student volunteers, this program may not have met expectations for career networking or protective motivators.
IMPACT STATEMENT: Volunteering in adaptive skiing can fulfill volunteers’ motivations toward humanitarianism, understanding children with special needs, and socialization. Findings can be directly applied toward improvement of adapted sports volunteer programs to optimize volunteers’ self-efficacy, career networking opportunities, and use of volunteering as a protective mechanism to promote emotional health. This study expands our understanding of the motivations for and value of volunteering for adults and college students and provides a means to assess the volunteer experience.
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