Date of Award

5-2014

Document Type

Master Thesis

Degree Name

Masters of Science (Research)

Department

Health and Leisure Studies

First Advisor

Pat Flanagan

Second Advisor

Dr Sean Connor

Abstract

A review of the literature identified a theme of ambiguity regarding the phenomenon of volunteerism, regarding the definition, academic perspectives and volunteer’s motives. The review also identified the Volunteer Process Model (VPM, Omoto and Snyder, 1995) and the researcher utilised this model when designing the mixed methods questionnaire to evaluate the motivations, satisfaction and attitudes towards disability of Hope’s international volunteers, both current (n=13) and previous (n=85), and also the impact the volunteer programme has on the volunteer’s careers. The attitudes towards disability of participating staff and management were also evaluated and compared with the volunteers. The impact on Hope’s workforce and service users was evaluated through the use of semi-structured interviews. Rapid ethnography was also used to validate the findings.

The results of the VFI showed that volunteers were mostly driven by Values, Understanding and Career motivations. However based on the qualitative findings, Adventure, Understanding and Career were the main motivators. The volunteers indicated that they were most satisfied with Group Integration with staff and service users, Work Assignment and Participation Efficacy, and they were least satisfied with Organisational Support and Communication Quality. Forty-nine percent of the volunteers stated that their careers were directly impacted and 29 percent reported an indirect impact. Twenty-two percent of previous volunteers are also in high impact roles within the area of disability service provision. Both the volunteers and Hope staff scored above average attitudes toward disability based on the Attitudes Towards Disabled Persons – Scale O (Yuker and Block, 1970). It seems the volunteers had positive attitudes before volunteering, most likely due to their previous experience, as 100% reported knowing someone with a disability, 43% had worked or volunteered with someone with a disability and 71% had studied a disability module.

The attitudes of Hope staff and management towards the volunteers were very positive with the majority referring to the enthusiasm and energy of the volunteers and reported their work ethic to be above average. The results show that the volunteers are the primary providers of physical activity and recreation services and programmes for Hope’s service users and also that volunteers generally develop meaningful relationships with the service users.

Access Level

info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess

Coverage

August 2024

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