Abstract
Recent experimental randomized controlled trial studies suggest that volunteering might not have beneficial effects on the general population. We revisit this issue by examining whether volunteering might produce general psychosocial benefits for volunteers over time. Actual volunteers and matched controls completed measures on a wide range of psychosocial variables – life satisfaction, self-esteem, purpose in life, positive and negative affect, gratitude, charitable intention, empathic concern, and relational well-being – before and after community service engagements by the volunteers (N = 369). We found little evidence to support the hypothesis that volunteers should exhibit improved psychosocial health relative to matched controls over time. In general, both volunteers and matched controls showed no change in all outcomes. We outline our key thoughts for the null effects and suggest avenues for future research.
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Notes
Another question is whether the effect of volunteering status might depend on the initial level (i.e., T1) of the psychosocial variable. For instance, it could be that only volunteers with low self-esteem to begin with might experience more benefits (i.e., higher levels of self-esteem at T2) from the volunteering relative to the matched controls whereas volunteers with high self-esteem at T1 would not benefit relative to the matched controls. We ran a series of moderation analyses each testing whether a psychosocial variable at T1 might affect the effect of volunteering status on the same variable at T2. As shown in Supplementary Materials Table 2, none of the interactions were significant.
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This research is funded by the Office of Student Affairs, National University of Singapore. Datafile and syntax are posted in https://osf.io/5kj34/?view_only=c4d9b779b53f499e9e0173e1026476f5.
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Tai-Wen Chew and Corrine S-L Ong were affiliated with the Department of Psychology and Office of Student Affairs, respectively, in the National University of Singapore (NUS), during the conduct of this research. Both have since left NUS.
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Chew, TW., Ong, C.SL., Oh, V.Y.S. et al. Does volunteering improve the psychosocial well-being of volunteers?. Curr Psychol 42, 22338–22350 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03345-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03345-y