Previous research on union participation has been disjointed, with no clear consensus on the definition and nature of participation. Additionally, few studies have examined how participation changes over time, with those that have finding mixed results regarding its stability. We propose that these mixed and inconsistent findings are due largely to past research focusing on overall levels of participation, ignoring differences in how individuals participate. To remedy this, we adopted a person‐centered approach to identify different types of union participators. Using a large sample of union members, we conducted latent transition analysis and found six union participator classes: high participators, leadership participators, formal union promoters, informal union promoters, silent supporters, and non‐participators. In addition, we examined how individuals changed membership across two time points (separated by 6 years), antecedents of class membership (role tenure and union commitment), and outcomes (freerider intentions and actual financial contributions to the union's political action fund). The six classes differed uniquely, in terms of the ways people participate, changes in how people participate over time, what predicted class membership, and how class membership impacts two outcomes. The current study demonstrates that person‐centered approaches can both clarify previous conflicting findings within the participation literature and predict meaningful outcomes.

中文翻译：

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随着时间的推移，工会参与者的类型：建立以人为中心的动态参与模型

先前关于工会参与的研究一直处于混乱状态，对参与的定义和性质尚无明确共识。此外，很少有研究检查参与度如何随时间变化，而那些研究发现其稳定性却有不同的结果。我们认为这些混杂和不一致的发现很大程度上是由于过去的研究侧重于总体参与水平，而忽略了如何个人参加。为了解决这个问题，我们采用了以人为本的方法来识别不同类型的工会参与者。我们使用大量的工会成员样本，进行了潜在的过渡分析，发现了六种工会参与者类别：高级参与者，领导者参与者，正式工会发起人，非正式工会发起人，沉默支持者和非参与者。此外，我们研究了个人如何在两个时间点（以6年为间隔）上更改成员资格，阶级成员资格的前身（角色任期和工会承诺）以及结果（自由主义者的意图和对工会政治行动基金的实际财政捐助）。六类课程在人的参与方式，人们随时间的参与方式的变化，预测的班级成员资格，以及班级成员资格如何影响两个结果。当前的研究表明，以人为本的方法既可以澄清参与文献中先前的矛盾发现，又可以预测有意义的结果。