Youth Service Program Participants in Canada: Perceptions on Motivations for Volunteering, Level of Engagement, and Level of Impact
Notice bibliographique
Résumé
Encouraging young people to be active in their communities and understanding of and responsive to the issues around them, especially through volunteer and service programs, allows these young people to be healthy and empowered citizens, while also generates positive social change for their community and the causes they advocate for. Given that youth volunteerism and youth service have such benefits, the sector has experienced a boost in activities that seek to meaningfully engage youth and create impact. Likewise, research has also adapted to provide a stream of current, science-based strategies, opportunities, and reflections to the program designers, funders, policymakers, etc., who guide the sector. However, young people and their experiences are still comparably excluded from the discourse. This thesis seeks to amplify the youth perspective by focusing on their motivations, interactions with program design qualities, and self-perceived impact. These objectives are explored through the following research questions: (1) why are young people in Canada participating in youth service programs; (2) what characteristics of the youth service programs are reflective of the young people’s personal motivations to apply; (3) how is the affinity between reasons for service and chosen programs significant for the young participants’ self-assessment of impact across different levels; and, (4) are there any patterns between personal motivations and program qualities? Youth perspectives were explored via responses to a survey and interview obtained from participants of current youth service programs in Canada after they had completed their respective program. The research methodology and partners, namely Canadian Wildlife Federation, Ocean Wise, and YMCA Canada, who administered the six youth service programs that were studied in this thesis, were adopted from the University of Waterloo’s Youth and Innovation Project. A total of 11 motivations to volunteer are discussed, with ‘advance personally and/or professionally’ and ‘engage in social connections’ identified as the top two motivations within this dataset. Out of the 10 literature-based program design components, ‘high degree of youth involvement’ is found to be the prominent across the six service programs. Using a four-pronged scale to measure impact across four levels, i.e., on the volunteer, on the organization, on the community, and on the issue, ‘extremely positive’ and ‘somewhat positive’ are the most applicable ratings on the community level and individual and issue level, respectively. This thesis reimagines several existing concepts within the literature of youth volunteerism by bringing together motivations, program design, and impact in one study, synthesizing primary, secondary, and inductive motivations, and using a simplistic rating system to examine impact. While the main objective of this thesis is to highlight youth experience in the discussion, this study also aims to meet several literary and practical gaps by generating ideas for future areas of studies and a set of recommendations for providers of service programs.
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Comment cette classification a été obtenuedéplier
Prédiction machine sur la base complète
Imitation des enseignantsNi prévalence calibrée, ni vérité terrain. Validation humaine à venir. Le volet Gemma est une étiquette directe du modèle pour chaque travail de la base, lue sur la notice réduite au titre. Le volet Codex est un classifieur appris des 10 348 étiquettes directes de Codex et calibré sur les taux pondérés de l'échantillon; les champs sans appui suffisant ne portent aucun appel Codex. Le mode candidate est l'union des deux volets; le consensus est leur intersection. Ces sorties portent le statut machine_predicted_unvalidated et ne sont pas des étiquettes humaines.
Scores du classifieur distillé par catégorie (deux têtes)
| Catégorie | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Métarecherche | 0,003 | 0,005 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens strict) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Méta-épidémiologie (sens large) | 0,000 | 0,000 |
| Bibliométrie | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Études des sciences et des technologies | 0,015 | 0,004 |
| Communication savante | 0,004 | 0,001 |
| Science ouverte | 0,001 | 0,004 |
| Intégrité de la recherche | 0,001 | 0,002 |
| Charge utile insuffisante (le modèle a refusé de juger) | 0,003 | 0,000 |
Scores machine (provisoires)
Les deux têtes enseignantes du modèle étudiant, lues sur ce travail. Un score ordonne la base pour la relecture; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie, et le statut de validation accompagne chaque rangée tel quel.
Scores de référence d'un modèle non mature (critères de maturité non atteints, 7 itérations). Un score ordonne; il n'affirme jamais une catégorie.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · tel quel depuis la passe de notation : score_only signifie que le nombre peut ordonner les travaux, et qu'aucune étiquette de catégorie n'en découleClassification
machine, non validéePrédiction automatique; un appel candidat d’une seule source (Gemma direct ou Codex distillé), pas un consensus.
Le détail, modèle par modèle et score par score, se trouve en fin de page sous « Comment cette classification a été obtenue ».