Research shows that people’s volunteering behaviors change over the life cycle. Young people might volunteer as means of improving their CV.  Newly married couples decrease their volunteering in the face of the adjustment to married life.  As couples begin to have children and invest in family life, their involvement shifts to be more involved in schools, youth organisations and religious communities.  In their more mature years, people might increase their volunteering hours as they retire from their jobs. But as old age and declining health interfere, volunteering tapers off. In addition to the effect of the life cycle on volunteering, the paper looks at how certain life events can also influence volunteering, including the birth of a child, getting divorced or being widowed.

The full paper can be found here.

Using a narrative approach allows researchers to explore how people make meaning of experience, how experience and meaning are shaped by context, and how people’s identities may be constructed by the stories they tell about themselves and their world. In the Pathways project, our interest in people’s stories about their experience of participation over their life times makes a narrative approach to data collection and analysis very appropriate. Traditionally, narrative has been associated with qualitative research, but the workshop leader, Professor Jane Elliot, explained that narrative is equally relevant in quantitative research – numbers ‘tell a story.’

Interestingly, the Centre for Longitudinal Studies is currently engaged in a piece of research focusing on social participation amongst a sub-sample of 1958 cohort members.  One of its aims is to try to understand why some members are more socially engaged than others. The Pathways team will certainly be following this research as it progresses.

Some commentators and academics (Robert Putnam amongst them) have proposed that the difference in participation levels between different age groups is less to do with people’s age and more to do with which generation they belong to. The argument (simply put) goes that Baby Boomers (born 1946 – 1964) are the great moral and ‘civic’ generation; with Generation X (born 1965 – 1981) being cynical, individualistic and ‘low participators’, whilst the Millennials (born 1982 – 1998) have a deep commitment to community and helping others, and they put their beliefs into action.

Pete Peterson challenges such stereotypes and, using data from the latest (US) Civic Health Index, argues that Generation X-ers not only volunteer more than Baby Boomers and ‘retired seniors’, but had increased their participation in the last year compared to Millennials, Boomers and Seniors. One of the reasons why Generation X-ers are currently derided and Millennials applauded is, Peterson suggests, because of their respective political leanings, with Millennials overwhelmingly self-identifying as Democrats (52%) compared to Republicans (30%). He warns, however, that Millennials also display a strong libertarian streak, and express support for fiscally conservative policies. He concludes that ‘while pundits keep handing out participation trophies to the Millennials, maybe this year they should save a few for the enlightened sceptics of Generation X.’

Whilst we won’t be handing out any trophies on the Pathways project, we will be looking at the influence of life stage and age on people’s participation, as well as a host of other factors! 

For the full article, and some useful references go to: http://www.newgeography.com/content/001374-get-real-aout-generation-x-stereotypes