The impact of community services on secondary school students' continuation of volunteering in Hong Kong

Abstract

Students studying under the new senior secondary school curriculum in Hong Kong can either perform community service under the Other Learning Experiences (OLE) organized by schools or volunteer their time for service. The primary aims of this study are to report the community service involvement of a selected group of secondary school students in Hong Kong, and to explore the impact of different types of community services on students’ intention to volunteer, volunteer satisfaction, and sense of personal and social responsibility. This study also investigates the effects of various individual and volunteering factors on students’ continuation of volunteering in Hong Kong.

A quantitative, cross-sectional research design was used to examine the relationship between community service and other variables, namely responsibility, intention and satisfaction on young people in Hong Kong. A total of 1,046 secondary school students aged between 13 and 21 were recruited via purposive sampling from seven secondary schools. The respondents in this study consisted of Forms 5 to 6 students, and they completed the self-administered questionnaire containing 92 items to measure the theory of planned behavior personal and social responsibility, volunteer satisfaction and continuation of volunteering. Based on their participation in community service under the OLE and their self-organized volunteer services, four groups of respondents can be identified. They are: 1) those who participated in both OLE-related community services and self-organized volunteer services (N=461, 44.84%); 2) those who participated in self-organized volunteer services only (N=339, 32.98%); 3) those who participated in OLE-related community services only (N=38, 3.70%) and 4) those who did not participate in any form of community services (N=190, 18.48%). As expected, findings indicate that the factors of gender, level of educational attainment and prior community service involvement are associated with volunteer intention, satisfaction, responsibility and continuation of volunteering. The results also highlight that those who did not participate in any form of community services in the past 12 years had the lowest scores on the Theory of Planned Behavior-Chinese (TPB-C) scale and continuation of volunteering behaviors. Students with only OLE-related community service participation had the lowest scores on Personal and Social Responsibility Scale-Chinese (PSRS-C), and Volunteer Satisfaction Index-Chinese (VSI-C). An Ordinal Logistic Regression analysis showed that the Theory of Planned Behavior, personal and social responsibility, and volunteer satisfaction are predictors of students’ continuation of volunteering behaviors.

This study offers further implications for school personnel and youth workers who work closely with young people and promote volunteerism among secondary school students. Students with voluntary community service experience (i.e. those who both participated in OLE-related community services and self-organized volunteer services, and those who participated in self-organized volunteer services only) have higher scores in their volunteer intention, satisfaction and responsibility. Practitioners can engage students with different community service programs in fostering their positive development. Practitioners can also improve service design and related arrangements with reference to the results of the study. For example, practitioners could encourage young people to serve specific targets that will ultimately bring about the most benefit to their continued volunteering. Further research is needed to validate and refine the scales of TPB-C and PSRS-C in the Chinese context, to explore factors in facilitating students’ continuing service involvement, and to develop evidence-based service programs for young people in Hong Kong.