Attitudes, Motives, and Demographic Predictors of Volunteer Commitment and Service Duration

This article reports the findings of a study of 147 volunteers at a midwestern crisis and information telephone service. It was hypothesized that demographic and motivational variables may be more predictive than attitudes toward their work of volunteer commitment and tenure. Discriminant and multiple regression analyses were used to test the strength of attitudes, motivations such as need for a job or training, and demographic variables. Education, gender, viewing volunteer work as having value and desire to learn a new skill were significant discriminators between levels of involvement. But aspects of the volunteer experience, along with education played a more important role in predicting service duration.