1. VOLUNTARY WORK AND ACTIVE
CITIZENSHIP FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF
TRAINING
The 7th European Research Conference , ESREA
Changing configurations of adult education in transitional times
Berlin 4-7.9.2013
Anitta Pehkonen
University of Tampere
OK Study C entre
FINLAND
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
8. 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
9. 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.
10. 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)
11. 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.
12. 1896 people responded to the query, whose
background information does not correspond
exactly to the Finnish demographics as a sample.
13. 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
14. 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.
15. 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
16. 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.
17. 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.
18.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. In this research it was intended that the studied
phenomena is examined more diversly by using
both quantitative and qualitative methods in
analysis
23. 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).
24. 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.
26. Table 2. Training as the inducement: subjective and intersubjective levels of the
interpretive model for social interaction
Freque
ncy
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
27. 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
28. 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.
29. 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.
30. 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.
