Research to Practice seeks to identify, review and interpret academic and other research important to the volunteer engagement field. Because the various reports and studies are discussed in terms of their major relevance to practitioners, each of the articles is also listed in the Engage Library by subject covered.
This edition of Research-to-Practice looks at three reports that examine corporate employee volunteering. Employee volunteering is an area of considerable growth and of great interest, but how can volunteer-involving organisations and volunteers managers make the most of…
When the 1997 National Survey for Volunteering in the UK was published, it appeared to show that young peoples’ regard and enthusiasm for volunteering was in decline. Responding to this, the Institute for Volunteering Research produced the report ‘What Young People Want from…
It seems counter-intuitive for most people working in volunteering that such participation should be bad for your health. A new research paper in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims just this, flying in the face of much other evidence. Is volunteering bad for…
Is Volunteering Rewarding in Itself?
Stephan Meier and Alois Stutzer
Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich
February 2004
Some things said about volunteering seem intuitively right; such as, volunteering can make you happy. Research such as the…
The current UK government has often re-iterated that its policy is 'evidence led'. Whether this happens in practice is for others to decide, but a useful spin-off is that research has become more prevalent in areas interesting government.
This Research into Practice focuses on a…
This Research to Practice article examines how Five Key Trends and Their Impact on the Voluntary Sector (a feature article in this issue) can be a model for interpreting data in a practical, put-it-to-use way.
The "Five Key Trends..." article is itself an example of translating…
Victoria is a fascinating city nestled in the westernmost portion of British Columbia. It is a city which is known for being “more English than the English” and a great place to have afternoon tea in the old style.
You wouldn’t think they’d be producing material on the cutting…
World Leisure, an international organization devoted to the scientific study and promotion of leisure, has as part of its structure several commissions devoted to matters consistent with this mission. One of these – the Volunteerism Commission – was founded to organize and…
One of the least-researched areas of volunteer involvement in the United States is that of ethnic volunteering. Hispanic volunteering, in particular, has received much less attention than it deserves considering the vast increase in size and importance of the Hispanic population…
Steven Farmer and Donald Fedor have taken a look at factors which make volunteers decide to continue and increase their contribution of volunteer time and effort to a particular organization. This issue is a serious one to effective involvement of volunteers, since the…
Marc Musick and John Wilson are doing some of the most interesting and useful studies of volunteer behavior today, and this current article, co-written with William Bynum, is no exception. In what is both a review of available literature and new research of their own, the…
Australia has been a hotbed of volunteering activity for the past few years and this report is an indication of the increasing seriousness with which the Australian government is attempting to involve itself in promoting volunteering. The report was produced as part of the 2001…
The Saguaro Seminar is a program of Harvard University that builds on the work of Robert Putnam (author of Bowling Alone: Collapse and Revival of the American Community). One of its initial activities was to conduct this national survey of almost 30,000 people, released in…
Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America
Marc Freedman
Public Affairs, New York, 1999
ISBN 1-891620-17-1
Marc Freedman's premise in Prime Time: How Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America is that the baby boom…
