VOLUNTARY WORK AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF TRAINING The 7th European Research Conference , ESREAChanging configurations of adult education in transitional timesBerlin 4-7.9.2013Anitta PehkonenUniversity of TampereOK Study C entreFINLAND

THE OBJECTIVE OF THE RESEARCH To investigate what roles do training have in

voluntary work and Do background variables have a connection

to the experience of significance of training.

VOLUNTARY WORK Voluntary work is defined as unpaid work

for the benefit of a cause or a person.

A larger term is voluntary activity, which can include paid work, that organization officials do, in order to organize voluntary work and other functions related.

ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP The Nordic term of citizenship (kansalainen,

medborgare) is seen to be closer to the English term, which states that citizenship is based on the right to vote

General European term of citizenship is originally based on the thought of common intellectual and political debate, what was held between the central cities.

CITIZENSHIP LINKS TO DEMOCRACY Democracy is the relatively even division of

power and the opportunities to use power among the population. (Rinne, 2011, pp. 13-14)

Based on the hermeneutic view, the content of the terms initiated from which context they are being used and what are the intentions of the user of the term (Stenius, 2003, p. 310)

Citizenship as the term includes in any case a dimension of communality

Citizenship is always in relation to the membership of some society such as association.

CIVIL ASSOCIATIONS AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP In Finland represent active citizenship widely

and in many forms Political parties are most visible from the civil

associations in the democratic decision-making.

In addition to them other civil associations, that represent different areas of life, influence the decision-making in matters important to their active sectors.

They participate globally, nationally and locally, e.g. in the form of different voluntary activities, in order to tend common matters.

In Grönlund’s research (2004) it was stated that religiousness as an activity guiding factor is not necessarily in relation to doing voluntary work, if that individual is only in some quantity religious.

It can be assumed that individuals only weakly attached to the values of the civil society do not do voluntary work based on the society’s ideological background but the things the participant personally experiences meaningful often function as the most important incentives for voluntary work.

The ideologies and values are not necessarily recognized by the volunteers or brought up as primary encouraging factors for doing voluntary work.

Volunteer workers execute the active citizenship by giving the work contribution for a cause that he sees as worthy of his support.

What encourages doing voluntary work can be the crucial factor when the decision upon doing voluntary work has been completed

TRAINING IN THE VOLUNTARY WORK Activities based on the law on liberal adult

education learning institutions, without the curriculum defined by authorities, give the opportunities for flexible and need-oriented training implementation.

In study centres and civil societies, as well as in other liberal adult education, content and objectives are planned locally and individually in each society.

Preparedness to participate and influence requires knowledge and skills that can be aquired by diverse training

Activities of civil societies and the included training have a primary role in learning active citizenship (Vrt. Stranius, 2009; Surowiecki, 2011)

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES, EXECUTION AND ANALYSIS METHODS

The qualitative data set was collected in December 2012 through a crowdsourcing method based on a web application.

The questionnaire was organised in a way that respondents were not identified.

Invitation to the questionnaire was disseminated through a group of non-profit organisations along with direct email messages to individuals who have participated in liberal adult education activities organised in the same organisations, and through Facebook.

It is estimated that there are approximately one million people who do voluntary work in Finland, which is nearly 25% of the citizens who are 15 and older.

1896 people responded to the query, whose background information does not correspond exactly to the Finnish demographics as a sample.

79,2 % of the respondents was women. The age groups were divided as presented:

below 30 years old 8,4 % , 30-60 years old 55,7 % and over 60 years old 35,9 %

37,4 % of the respondents had completed a university degree and 62,5% had some other education

64,2 % live in urban environments 47,1 % were working and 4,6% were

unemployed

The group of participant in the research are a sample of people participated in voluntary work.

It is not possible to form a sample of voluntary workers that would correspond to the real participant profile of voluntary work.

The main objective was to understand the reality that encourages (or blocks) the voluntary work.

It was not an objective of the research to produce quantitative material in order to generalize results

The significance of training as a supportive factor was not asked but the informants produced training related matters independently in their responses.

Background information was used to form undependable factors that were expected to explain the classes formed in the qualitative analysis, for which the social interaction reading model functions as a framework.

Material collection resembles of both individual and group interview, where each participant first answers the first open question and then receives stimulus from the responses produced by the other respondents. ”What helps or would help you to do voluntary work now and in the future” was the question

Participants produced 5060 statements. In addition to these statements the participant

evaluated the significance of other statements produced by other participants by placing them on a distance scale representing importance.

The responses were selected for assessment by a respondent-based algorithm so that each response had an even chance of being selected.

Statements of the material were analysed by classifying them by the interpretive model of social interaction in subjective and intersubjective levels.

Classified material was also analysed statistically through cross-stabulation with regard to the background variables.

Variables that were assumed to have some influence in which factors would encourage voluntary work were transformed into undependable variables for the purpose of quantitative analysis.

These were educational attainment, life situation, age, gender, experience in voluntary work and its regularity and living environment.

Background variables were selected based on previous research knowledge.

In this research it was intended that the studied phenomena is examined more diversly by using both quantitative and qualitative methods in analysis

THE INTERPRETIVE MODEL OF SOCIAL INTERACTION (KARJALAINEN & SILJANDER, 1993)

PIILO THE INTERPRETIVE MODEL OF SOCIAL INTERACTION The classification of the research material is based

on the interpretive model of social interaction by Karjalaisen and Siljanderin (1993). The purpose of the model is to identify and understand any activity or find significance levels in activity.

The model also includes an unconscious level both in subjective and intersubjective levels.

The philosophical tradition of the model is the hermeneutical interpretation of information, where the phenomena is sought to be understood contextually and where the social interaction is same to the researcher as the text is to the reader (Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 2009).

THE VIEWS OF VOLUNTEERS ON SIGNIFICANCE OF TRAINING AS AN INCENTIVE FOR VOLUNTARY WORK

In the first phase of the analysis material was found by classifying the entity of functions related to voluntary work into subjective, intersubjective historical and intersubjective universal levels, which functioned as the main categories accordingly to the interpretative model of social interaction.

After this the statements were formed into sub-classes according to the statements’ relation to each other.

Sublevels were further divided into sublevels if material presented them.

MAIN CLASSIFICATION FROM THE RESEARCH MATERIAL

Table 2. Training as the inducement: subjective and intersubjective

levels of the interpretive model for social interaction

  Frequ

ency

Percent Valid

Percent

Cumulative Percent

 

*Not the most

important

1795 94,7 94,7 94,7

*The most

important

subjective

7 ,4 ,4 95,1

*The most

important

intersubjective

93 4,9 4,9 100,0

Total 1895 100,0 100,0  

Parts of training in voluntary work formed from the qualitative classification from the research material

Subjective, conscious, training as the most important incentive

  Related to self-development and wellfare

    Learning new and training

Intersubjective, conscious, historical, training as the most

important incentive

  Training in voluntary work

    Organization of training

    Feedback and rewarding

    Guiding the voluntary work

BACKGROUND INFORMATION RELATED TO TO THE DEPENDABLE VARIABLE TRAINING Background information, of which the undependable variables

were formed (education, life situation, age, gender, experience in voluntary work, regularity and living environment), connection of which to the dependable variable, training as the primary supportive variable for voluntary work, was measures using cross-stabulation, statistical connection was not present.

Age ( p= .234) and living environment’s ( p= .103) connection to the experience of training as the primary incentive was present but the connection is not on a statistically significant level.

Relatively larger portion (5,4%) of respondents aged between 25 and 50 felt that training was the primary incentive when compared to other age groups.

Greater portion of respondents from urban areas saw training more important than the respondents from rural areas.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRAINING Some of the informants were selected to

evaluate the significance of training as an incentive factorregardless of whether they had expressed training as a primary incentive factor.

Selection was made so that all factors were evaluated equally.

50 respondents evaluated the significance of training related matters.

Respondents gave training on average the score of x=73 (scale of 0-100).

Voluntary work as a lifestyle received the score of x= 85 wish to help x= 78 functionality of voluntary work society x= 74,5 experienced need of help and benefit of

voluntary work x=74 positive feedback of the work x=74 organization of voluntary work x=74

Other evaluated matters (20 factors) were experienced as less encouraging as training.

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