Volunteering among Higher Education Students. Focusing on the Micro-level Factors

Journal of Social Research & Policy, Volume: 3, Issue: 1, pp. 73-95.

Date: July 2012

ISSN: 2067-2640 (print), 2068-9861 (electronic)

Abstract: In our paper, we intend to examine the micro-level factors affecting the volunteering of higher education students. Although several theories and research studies approach this phenomenon, a relatively small amount of studies examines the volunteering of higher education students. Based on the literature, the young generation today participates in new types of volunteering, in which their motivation is not dominantly altruistic. These results call our attention to the necessity for new measurements and indicators of volunteering. The new approach in our research is that we differentiated between the voluntary work of students and the voluntary extracurricular activities of students. Among micro-level factors affecting volunteering, we examine the effects of demographic variables and the students’ social background. However, based on the literature, we suppose that the effect of religiosity and values (which are related to the motivations of volunteering of students as well) are more pronounced. Regression models are used to examine these effects both on voluntary work and on extracurricular activities of students. Our databases are regional (first, we examine the voluntary activities of students at the University of Debrecen, then the extracurricular activities of students in the so-called Partium region), but our goal is to show general tendencies of volunteering of higher education students, taking into account the possible regional differences as well.

Keywords: Volunteering, Higher Education Students, Quantitative Research