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Volunteerism influences on student resilience and gratitude
Abstract
We assessed the relative impact of volunteerism on the resilience and gratitude of students based on participation. A convenience sample of 80 students (female = 53.75%; age range = 18-25 years) participated in the study, of which 38 (47.50%) had volunteer experience. The students completed measures of self-report for volunteer work hours, the Brief Resilience Scale, and the Gratitude Questionnaire. Following linear regression analysis, results indicated that volunteers reported significantly higher resilience and gratitude scores than peers who were non-volunteers. No notable interaction effect emerged after controlling for age, sex, and family monthly income. Among those with volunteer experience, results indicated that the more hours they spend volunteering, the higher their sense of resilience and gratitude. Findings suggest volunteerism is important in improving students’ well-being.
... The informal courses mentioned here include volunteering [19]. Undergraduate volunteer service also brings realistic academic performance improvement, social skills improvement, personal happiness, and self-esteem enhancement to students, and thus contributes to the further sustainable development of society [20][21][22]. ...
Sustainable development is an extremely important global vision of the current era, and higher education plays a significant role in deeply immersing young people in this prospect. As an important part of labor education for contemporary Chinese university students, volunteer service has proven to be a sustainable and valuable talent training process. Different from the grand narrative and simple political perspective of previous studies, this paper selects the relevant data of a university in Beijing as a sample to conduct a “black box disassembling” micro study. By building three sets of data, the authors were able to adopt difference-in-differences, analysis of variance, and hierarchical regression methods to study the comprehensive improvement of university students’ inner ability and sense of responsibility after participating in voluntary services. Results show that participation in more voluntary services will improve students’ performance and employment quality, mostly promote students’ teamwork ability, and differentially enhance students’ comprehensive, personal, and collective senses of responsibility, thus facilitating education for a sustainable future and, accordingly, economic development. The study reveals the formation mechanism of the sustainability value of voluntary service in more detail, complements the absence of Chinese sample data in international studies, and lays an effective foundation for more comprehensive micro studies in the future.
... HEIs that promote volunteerism also impart the culture of giving back to community at a personal level; serving on community boards, giving to the needy, and participation in community projects among other activities that add value to the community (Berei, 2020;Matti, 2020;Quirk, 2019). Quality education advocates social employment or student corporate social responsibility/volunteerism, and with certain HEIs, a student has to serve a certain minimum number of hours of community work before they graduate (Bhagwan, 2020;Clark, 2020;Llenares, 2020;Yizengaw, 2020;Zheng, 2021). HEIs also create significant value for communities through running training and development programmes for communities on a pro bono basis and engaging these communities for running projects collaboratively, imparting skills and expertise in the process (Al-Zyoud, 2020;Joseph, 2020;Langrafe, 2020;Papadimitriou, 2020;Sabra, 2020). ...
This study explores the concept of Academic Value Addition (AVA), that is, the value generated for the various stakeholders in the higher education sector as a result of effective implementation of quality assurance interventions in higher education. AVA looks at the value that is derived from instituting effective and efficient quality assurance policies and processes in academic provision. The various stakeholders that derive value from quality higher education are identified; students, parents, employers, communities, partner organisations, governments and higher education institutions. The different dimensions of academic value added for these stakeholder groups are interrogated theoretically and empirically. A dearth exists on literature that specifically focuses on the value that is created through effective implementation of various quality assurance interventions in higher education and this paper endeavours to close that gap by articulating the different dimensions of value derived by various stakeholders from a quality higher education system. Based on both theoretical foundations and empirical evidence, conclusions are drawn and recommendations proffered.
... personal development, reward feelings, employability, etc.). Some examples include cross-cultural study to investigate motivation and benefits of participation in volunteer activities in different patterns (Smith et al., 2010), the reasons for being volunteer and students' expectation from their engagement (Holdsworth, 2010), graduate employability (Goodman & Tredway, 2016), quality of volunteer motivation; self-oriented versus other-oriented motives (Güntert et al., 2016), different approaches to volunteering motivation (Butt et al., 2017), benefits and motivations of volunteerism (Pardasani, 2018), the impact of volunteerism on resilience and gratitude of students (Llenares et al., 2020) can be mentioned. ...
Volunteerism is influenced by varied motivational factors. As the world is still suffering from the devastating effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, China, through collective efforts by the government, local people, and the international community comprising of student volunteers, has been able to reduce the rate of infection. The qualitative study involving fifteen (15) international postgraduate student volunteers explored the motivation behind their decision to volunteer in the deadly COVID-19 crisis. Participants of the study were randomly sampled from three universities. Findings of the study suggest that student volunteers were largely influenced by intrinsic-altruistic motives as opposed to extrinsic motives. The volunteers distributed mask, thermometers, checked temperatures, educated students on COVID-19, and made videos to encourage students suffering from anxiety, depression, and boredom. It was found that despite contextual challenges, the intrinsically and altruistically motivated volunteers had satisfaction to engage in volunteering activities. Volunteer management boards should ensure volunteers are well-motivated. Future research should replicate this study by investigating factors that affect the volunteering role of international students and the impact of international volunteering on well-being and work-life of volunteers.
p>Kerelawanan tidak hanya berguna untuk penerima manfaat tapi juga untuk para relawan yang berperan. Dengan membantu orang lain, relawan dinilai dapat meningkatkan rasa syukur. Kemampuan untuk merasa bersyukur memiliki manfaat positif terhadap kondisi psikologis individu. Penelitian ini melibatkan 108 relawan di Indonesia untuk melihat hubungan antara fungsi motivasi menjadi relawan dan bersyukur. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode penelitian kuantitatif dengan cara pengambilan data menggunakan kuesioner online . Selain melihat hubungan antara fungsi motivasi menjadi relawan dengan bersyukur, penelitian ini juga bertujuan untuk mencari tahu lebih bagaimana korelasi antara durasi menjadi relawan dan fungsi motivasi dengan bersyukur. Hasil menunjukan bahwa terdapat korelasi positif antara fungsi motivasi protective (r=0,309; p< 0,05) , value (r=0,248; p< 0,05) , dan social (r=0,202; p< 0,05) dengan bersyukur. Selain itu, tidak ada perbedaan tingkat motivasi relawan Indonesia dari segi jenis kelamin dan durasi menjadi relawan. Penelitian ini diharapkan dapat mendukung riset sebelumnya yang menunjukan bahwa kerelawanan dapat dijadikan alternatif aktivitas yang bermanfaat bagi kesehatan mental individu.
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Background
Volunteering positively affects overall health of both volunteers and recipients through social interaction, support and physical activity. Health professionals’ volunteering has considerable potential to improve health outcomes in communities.
Objectives
This study aimed to summarize published scientific literature regarding volunteering by health professionals.
Method
Medine, Embase, Scopus, PsycINFO and CINAHLdatabases were searched to identify eligible studies published between 2010 and 2023. Data on study methods and findings were extracted and synthesized.
Results
Of the 144 eligible studies, 80 (56%) used quantitative methods, 46 (32%) used qualitative, 18 (12%) used mixed methods and 8 (6%) were interventional. Doctors (74 studies, 51%) and nurses (n = 40, 28%) were the professions with most reports of volunteering. Half the studies were from USA (n = 77, 53%), followed by UK (n = 19, 13%), Canada (n = 12, 8%), and Australia/New Zealand (n = 11, 8%). International volunteering in low-to-middle-income countries was reported in 64 studies (44%). Providing service and training were the dominant types of activities (n = 90, 62.5%), with health promotion reported in only 4 studies (3%). Studies reported positive impact from volunteering, both professionally and personally. Time and family commitments were the main barriers. Enablers, barriers and impact were summarized in a socio-ecological map.
Conclusion
Health professionals volunteer in diverse activities and report multifaceted benefits. Studies of volunteering interventions could enable new, sustainable approaches to health promotion.
This cross‐sectional study assessed the extent to which the intention to volunteer after the COVID‐19 pandemic is associated with resilience, post‐traumatic growth, and community service self‐efficacy in a representative Italian sample ( N = 295; M age = 44.77; SD = 14.79; range = 18–83 years; 53.22% men). The model tested through a path analysis revealed a positive association between community service self‐efficacy and intention to continue volunteering. Multi‐group comparisons revealed that this relationship was maintained in participants who were active volunteers, while in the group of former volunteers, only a positive association between post‐traumatic growth and intention to volunteer was found. This study contributed to highlight the importance of community service self‐efficacy and post‐traumatic growth in the volunteering experience and the intention to continue volunteering in the future.
Perfectionism has been a challenge in university students’ everyday lives. As perfectionism can negatively affect students’ mental health, researchers have suggested ways to manage perfectionism and build students’ resilience towards having a better wellbeing. One way is to practice self-compassion. This study utilized mediation analyses to investigate if self-compassion mediates the relationship between the trait dimensions of perfectionism and psychological resilience among Filipino university students. A sample of 317 undergraduate students from the University of the Philippines Diliman participated and answered scales that measure the variables of interest. Results indicate that when covariates were excluded, self-oriented perfectionism (SOP) and socially prescribed perfectionism influenced psychological resilience indirectly via self-compassion, while SOP and other-oriented perfectionism (OOP) directly affected psychological resilience, independent of self-compassion. When covariates were included, the same findings were found, but OOP also influenced psychological resilience indirectly via self-compassion. Implications of the findings are discussed in this study.
The aim of this study was to identify the risk factors and protective factors that impact stress response and resilience, and to examine the longitudinal relationship between stress response, the internalization of problems, and resilience in disaster victims on the basis of the diathesis-stress model and resilience theory. A total of 217 adult men and 247 adult women aged 20 years or older who responded to the 2017 and 2018 disaster victim panel surveys participated in this study. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling on SPSS and AMOS software. The results obtained showed that pre-disaster psychiatric history, injury history, extent of property damage, and change of residence significantly predicted posttraumatic stress response, and sex, health status, and social support significantly predicted resilience. Furthermore, stress response and depression/anxiety were found to be closely related and the path from stress response to depression/anxiety was found to be significant. It was also suggested that this relationship is moderated by resilience, however this moderation was not observed in the second year. The results of this study suggest that it is effective to focus on promoting resilience in the disaster preparation and initial response phases, but in the recovery phase, evaluation and treatment interventions considering stress response and internalization issues may be effective. Possible measures for screening and intervention among high-risk groups with considerations for disaster-prone areas and cultural backgrounds in Korea were discussed.
In this study, we assessed student soft-skills after a 36-month long community service program in a Philippine private higher education institution. The Soft Skills-Graduate Attribute Scale was developed to measure professional competence, critical thinking skills, communication skills, lifelong learning, social and ethical responsibility, productivity, and interpersonal skills. Sixty (60) marine engineering students were purposively selected based on their participation in the various community service activities. The result shows that students who regularly volunteered have significantly higher measures of graduate attributes relating to professional competence, communication skills, and social and ethical responsibility as compared to non-regular and first-time volunteers. This study underscores the value of service learning programs in higher education in improving soft skills as well as the cross-cultural competencies of students in highly technical fields.
This study was conceived within the context of increasing incidence of mental health challenges observed among college adolescents in the Philippines. Being an important social institution, the school must be able to create a social environment in order to foster better mental wellbeing and quality of life among its students. This research sought to examine the relationship among student involvement, mental health and quality of life among college students in a Philippine university. This study utilized a quantitative cross-sectional, descriptive, correlational design. Survey was administered to 249 students in a private university. Results suggest that involvement in school organizations was correlated to depression levels, general positive affect and life satisfaction. Social interactions with entities in school was also related with quality of life. All subscales of mental health were associated with quality of life among the student respondents.
Purpose – This study was designed to create platforms to train students in higher education to be caring and responsible citizens. This was an extension mission that aimed to tap into the expertise of academe and its knowledge to help the community. Based on the framework of academic of community empowerment, the researchers measured the long-term impact of a 44-month community extension program in the Philippines. The extension program described in this study was implemented between March 2009 and December 2015 to address the capacity-building needs of a low-income community. This paper highlights some key development activities which includes partnership with local government, training needs assessment through grassroots-level participation and design of practical education-training programs.
Methodology – The study followed a descriptive research design. The Community Outcome Scale (COS) was developed to measure perceived knowledge, attitude, and lifestyle of the beneficiaries. Fifty-four community residents were purposively selected based on their attendance to the community-based education and training programs. The ANOVA method with post hoc analysis was employed to determine the differences between perceived knowledge, attitude, and lifestyle among residents, stratified according to the degree of completion of the training programs.
Findings – There was a moderate improvement in community knowledge, attitude, and lifestyle based on the survey which was performed one and a half years after the completion of the extension programs. Based on the results, improved long-term outcomes were noted only amongst the regular and occasional participants.
Significance – There is an increasing appreciation of the impact of higher education extension in the teaching and learning process as students apply their disciplinary knowledge to help address real-world problems. This work may be of interest to higher education institutions (HEIs) which are designing community extension programs with optimized societal outcomes.
In four studies, the authors examined the correlates of the disposition toward gratitude. Study 1 revealed that self-ratings and observer ratings of the grateful disposition are associated with positive affect and well-being prosocial behaviors and traits, and religiousness/spirituality. Study 2 replicated these findings in a large nonstudent sample. Study 3 yielded similar results to Studies 1 and 2 and provided evidence that gratitude is negatively associated with envy and materialistic attitudes. Study 4 yielded evidence that these associations persist after controlling for Extraversion/positive affectivity, Neuroticism/negative affectivity, and Agreeableness. The development of the Gratitude Questionnaire, a unidimensional measure with good psychometric properties, is also described.
This article presents and interprets the strong evidence that helping others in meaningful ways generally results in a happier, healthier, resilient, and even longer life for the giver; based on the strength of this evidence overall and in subpopulations including patient groups, it then asserts that the time has come for health-care professionals to prescribe and recommend such behavior at sustainable levels generally in the range of 2 hours per week. The medical evidence justifies the prescribing (or recommending) of volunteerism and helping activities for individuals, schools, companies, and whole communities. This article presents this innovative claim against the backdrop Norman Rockwell’s iconic image of The Golden Rule (1961), in which he captures the benefits of focusing our minds and actions on contributing to the lives of others. The review encompasses all age groups, many special categories of people grappling with illness, and population health generally.
Programs targeting student volunteering and service learning are aimed at encouraging civic behaviour among young people. This article reports on a large-scale international survey comparing volunteering among university students in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The data revealed high rates of student volunteering and the popularity of occasional volunteering. It also revealed that other young people were the main beneficiaries of students’ voluntary activities. Student volunteers were influenced by a mix of motivations and benefits, with differences on acontinuum of volunteer involvement between those volunteering regularly, those volunteering occasionally, and those not volunteering.
While research on service–learning has been mixed, there is evidence to suggest that service–learning programs which thoroughly integrate service and academic learning through continuous reflection promote development of the knowledge, skills, and cognitive capacities necessary for students to deal effectively with the complex social issues that challenge citizens. While there is not much research in the service–learning literature that specifically addresses techniques of reflection, evidence from studies of problem–based learning, situated cognition, and cognitive development suggests approaches to reflection that will enhance the power of service–learning in attaining these important goals which facilitate full community participation. This review presents concrete suggestions about this type of program.
Based on entering freshman and follow-up data collected from 3,450 students (2,287 women and 1,163 men) attending 42 institutions with federally funded community service programs, the impact of community service participation on undergraduate student development was examined. Even after regression analyses controlled for individual student characteristics at the time of college entry, including the propensity to engage in service, results indicate that participating in service during the undergraduate years substantially enhances the student's academic development, life skill development, and sense of civic responsibility.
Community service learning is the name given to the integration of community service into students' courses. Community service learning can be seen as a subset of work-integrated learning. Most universities include service to the community in their mission statements. The purpose of service learning is to help the community while also helping students to gain professional skills that they might need in the future. Industry requires university graduates to be equipped with technical knowledge and also with graduate capabilities/attributes and/or generic skills such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills. This paper explores business students' experience of service learning in the community and investigates the attributes that students report they have achieved from their experience. The research argues that service learning can be used to develop the attributes required by university and for industry. The paper describes how the community service learning subject is offered at Australian Catholic University (ACU) in Melbourne, Australia. A content analysis was undertaken of the students' reflective reports in order to determine the skills that the students recorded that they have developed through their experience. The findings provide insight into the perceptions of students regarding their community engagement experience and how this links to the graduate attributes that the university is trying to develop in students. Billett's framework for effective incorporation of work integration learning has been used to make recommendations regarding the outcome of community service learning at ACU. Overall, the community service was a positive experience for business students, increasing their confidence and their ability to work with others. (Asia-Pacific Journal of Cooperative Education, 2011, 12(1), 51-66).
This paper presents a new model of gratitude incorporating not only the gratitude that arises following help from others but also a habitual focusing on and appreciating the positive aspects of life", incorporating not only the gratitude that arises following help from others, but also a habitual focusing on and appreciating the positive aspects of life. Research into individual differences in gratitude and well-being is reviewed, including gratitude and psychopathology, personality, relationships, health, subjective and eudemonic well-being, and humanistically orientated functioning. Gratitude is strongly related to well-being, however defined, and this link may be unique and causal. Interventions to clinically increase gratitude are critically reviewed, and concluded to be promising, although the positive psychology literature may have neglected current limitations, and a distinct research strategy is suggested. Finally, mechanisms whereby gratitude may relate to well-being are discussed, including schematic biases, coping, positive affect, and broaden-and-build principles. Gratitude is relevant to clinical psychology due to (a) strong explanatory power in understanding well-being, and (b) the potential of improving well-being through fostering gratitude with simple exercises.
In an effort to strengthen conceptual foundations of eudaimonic well-being, key messages from Aristotle’s Nichomacean Ethics are revisited. Also examined are ideas about positive human functioning from existential and utilitarian philosophy as well
as clinical, developmental, and humanistic psychology. How these perspectives were integrated to create a multidimensional
model of psychological well-being [Ryff, C.D.: 1989a, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 57(6), pp. 1069–1081] is
described, and empirical evidence supporting the factorial validity of the model is briefly noted. Life course and socioeconomic
correlates of well-being are examined to underscore the point that opportunities for eudaimonic well-being are not equally
distributed. Biological correlates (cardiovascular, neuroendocrine, immune) of psychological well-being are also briefly noted
as they suggest possible health benefits associated with living a life rich in purpose and meaning, continued growth, and
quality ties to others. We conclude with future challenges in carrying the eudaimonic vision forward.
While resilience has been defined as resistance to illness, adaptation, and thriving, the ability to bounce back or recover from stress is closest to its original meaning. Previous resilience measures assess resources that may promote resilience rather than recovery, resistance, adaptation, or thriving.
To test a new brief resilience scale.
The brief resilience scale (BRS) was created to assess the ability to bounce back or recover from stress. Its psychometric characteristics were examined in four samples, including two student samples and samples with cardiac and chronic pain patients.
The BRS was reliable and measured as a unitary construct. It was predictably related to personal characteristics, social relations, coping, and health in all samples. It was negatively related to anxiety, depression, negative affect, and physical symptoms when other resilience measures and optimism, social support, and Type D personality (high negative affect and high social inhibition) were controlled. There were large differences in BRS scores between cardiac patients with and without Type D and women with and without fibromyalgia.
The BRS is a reliable means of assessing resilience as the ability to bounce back or recover from stress and may provide unique and important information about people coping with health-related stressors.
Well-being is a complex construct that concerns optimal experience and functioning. Current research on well-being has been derived from two general perspectives: the hedonic approach, which focuses on happiness and defines well-being in terms of pleasure attainment and pain avoidance; and the eudaimonic approach, which focuses on meaning and self-realization and defines well-being in terms of the degree to which a person is fully functioning. These two views have given rise to different research foci and a body of knowledge that is in some areas divergent and in others complementary. New methodological developments concerning multilevel modeling and construct comparisons are also allowing researchers to formulate new questions for the field. This review considers research from both perspectives concerning the nature of well-being, its antecedents, and its stability across time and culture.
Guided by interactional role theory and employing a resilience framework, this study aimed to investigate whether formal volunteering protects older adults with more role-identity absences in major life domains (partner, employment, and parental) from poorer psychological well-being.
We used data from 373 participants, aged 65-74, in the 1995 National Survey of Midlife Development in the U.S. (MIDUS). Multivariate regression models estimated the effects of major role-identity absences, formal volunteering, and the interaction between major role-identity absences and volunteering on respondents' negative affect, positive affect, and purpose in life.
Participants with a greater number of major role-identity absences reported more negative affect, less positive affect, and less purpose in life. Being a formal volunteer was associated with more positive affect and moderated the negative effect of having more major role-identity absences on respondents' feelings of purpose in life.
Consistent with previous studies, findings indicate that having more role-identity absences constitutes a risk factor for poorer psychological well-being. Results further demonstrate that being a formal volunteer can protect older adults with a greater number of major role-identity absences from decreased levels of purpose in life. The findings suggest that associations between volunteering and psychological well-being might be contingent upon the volunteer's role-identity status and the dimension of psychological well-being examined.
In Passion and Reason, Lazarus draws on his four decades of pioneering research to bring readers the first book to move beyond both clinical jargon and feel-good’ popular psychology. In plain, accessible language, Lazarus explains how emotions are aroused, how they are managed, and how they critically shape our views of ourselves and the world around us. Dr Lazarus explores the latest findings on the short and long-term causes and effects of various emotions, including the often conflicting research on stress management and links between negative emotions and heart disease, cancer, and other aspects of physical and psychological health.
This study investigated the associations between gratitude, measures of well-being, and indicators of psychological distress (depression and negative emotion) among South African university students. Data were collected from 198 first-year university students (female = 69.70%; mean age = 20.55 years, SD = 1.70 years) using measures of gratitude, flourishing, well-being, depression, and negative emotion. The results showed that gratitude is positively associated with measures of well-being, and inversely related to indicators of psychological distress. University-based support programmes should consider gratitude interventions to support student success.
Service-learning is a teaching strategy that offers students opportunities to learn both in the classroom and in the wider world. This pedagogical tool provides students with chances to directly interact with local agencies and effect change in the community. Thus, service-learning holds the potential to broaden and significantly enhance the learning climate for students. Based on an established theoretical model of academic motivation, the present study examined the effectiveness of service-learning to enhance the learning climate across a variety of academic disciplines. More than 600 students registered in service-learning courses from more than 30 different disciplines took part in the study. Results showed that when service-learning contributes to an enhancement of the positivity of the learning climate, then positive forms of motivation, civic skills, problem solving, and appreciation of diversity significantly increased over the course of the semester. Results also showed that type of involvement, amount of in-class discussion, and reflections are important factors contributing to the effectiveness of the service-learning environment.
This article presents and interprets the strong evidence that helping others in meaningful ways generally results in a happier, healthier, resilient, and even longer life for the giver; based on the strength of this evidence overall and in subpopulations including patient groups, it then asserts that the time has come for health-care professionals to prescribe and recommend such behavior at sustainable levels generally in the range of 2 hours per week. The medical evidence justifies the prescribing (or recommending) of volunteerism and helping activities for individuals, schools, companies, and whole communities. This article presents this innovative claim against the backdrop Norman Rockwell's iconic image of The Golden Rule (1961), in which he captures the benefits of focusing our minds and actions on contributing to the lives of others. The review encompasses all age groups, many special categories of people grappling with illness, and population health generally.
Who tends to volunteer and why? What causes attract certain types of volunteers? What motivates people to volunteer? How can volunteers be persuaded to continue their service? Making use of a broad range of survey information to offer a detailed portrait of the volunteer in America, Volunteers provides an important resource for everyone who works with volunteers or is interested in their role in contemporary society. Mark A. Musick and John Wilson address issues of volunteer motivation by focusing on individuals' subjective states, their available resources, and the influence of gender and race. In a section on social context, they reveal how volunteer work is influenced by family relationships and obligations through the impact of schools, churches, and communities. They consider cross-national differences in volunteering and historical trends, and close with consideration of the research on the organization of volunteer work and the consequences of volunteering for the volunteer.
This is an introduction to a Filipino virtue ethics which is a relationship-oriented virtue ethics. The concepts to be discussed are the result of the unique history of the Philippines, namely a Southeast Asian tribal and animist tradition mixed with a Spanish Catholic tradition for over 300 years. Filipino virtue ethics is based on two foundational concepts in Filipino culture. The first is loób, which can easily be misunderstood when literally translated into English as ‘inside’ but which is better translated as ‘relational will’, and the second is kapwa, which is literally translated as ‘other person’ but is better understood as ‘together with the person’. These serve as pillars for a special collection of virtues (kagandahang-loób, utang-na-loób, pakikiramdam, hiya, lakas-ng-loób/bahala na) which are not individualistic virtues in the same way as most of the cardinal virtues of the Western tradition (i.e. prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude) but are all directed towards the preservation and strengthening of human relationships. This introduction to a Filipino virtue ethics is articulated and organized through a dialogue with Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics.
Gratitude is an emotional state and an attitude toward life that is a source of human strength in enhancing one's personal and relational well-being. In this article, we first explore the theological origins of gratitude as a virtue to be cultivated in the major monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each tradition emphasizes the development of gratitude as a path to a good life, and prescribes approaches for practicing. Gratitude is explored further in the context of psychological theory and research. Empirical research linking gratitude with well-being and goal attainment is presented and discussed. Finally, future research questions and a tentative research agenda are presented.
This article is about the effects of student-community engagement on the employment prospects of graduates. Its aims are to examine critically the reasons for the belief that student-community engagement enhances graduate employability and to assess the strength of the case for that
belief. The article seeks to contribute to the development of a theory of how student-community engagement affects graduate employability. It offers a ‘knowledge, skills and attitudes’ framework for student-community engagement that can be related to graduate employability. It
concludes with lessons to enhance the contribution of student-community engagement to graduate employability.
A measure of institutionalization of service learning, completed by representatives from diverse institutions of higher education, indicated that greater institutionalization was found among those that had attended a Campus Compact planning institute, established a centralized office to coordinate activities, funded that office with university funds, and located it under the chief academic officer. Implications are presented.
Gratitude practice can be a catalyzing and relational healing force, often untapped in clinical practice. In this article, we provide an overview of current thinking about gratitude's defining and beneficial properties, followed by a brief review of the research on mental health outcomes that result from gratitude practice. Following an analysis of our case study of the use of gratitude as a psychotherapeutic intervention, we present various self-strategies and techniques for consciously choosing and cultivating gratitude. We conclude by describing ways in which gratitude might be capitalized upon for beneficial outcomes in therapeutic settings.
Responses from a nationally representative sample of 13,000 high school seniors were analyzed to identify predictors of normative, unconventional, and deviant orientations among youth. Normative orientation was indexed using indicators of conventional political involvement (e. g., voting), religious attendance, and importance of religion. Unconventional orientation was indexed with unconventional political involvement (e. g., boycotting). Deviance was measured through marijuana use. Frequency of community service substantially increased predictability of these variables over and above background characteristics and part-time work involvement. Involvement in most types of school-based extracurricular activities was positively associated with doing service, as was moderate part-time work. Background characteristics of attending Catholic school, being female, having high socioeconomic status, and coming from an intact family also predicted service involvement. Results are discussed in terms of a theory of social-historical identity development, suggesting that community service affords youth a developmental opportunity to partake of traditions that transcend the material moment and existential present.
Resilience researchers are intrigued with the challenge of understanding how people overcome risk or adversity to succeed in life. The study of resilience emerged about 40 years ago when a group of scientists studying the origins of behaviour problems and mental illness were surprised to find that many children in "high risk" groups were developing well. Realizing the importance of understanding such children, these pioneers inspired many others to study resilience. These scholars have been instrumental in moving away from deficit-based models to positive frameworks for change that take advantage of existing adaptive systems in human development and social systems. This article highlights key lessons learned from current research on resilience that may guide practices and policies aimed at promoting positive development among children exposed to high levels of risk or adversity.
This analytic review focuses on theory and research on volunteerism. First, we define volunteerism as freely chosen helping activities that extend over time and that are often performed through organizations and on behalf of receptive causes or individuals. Next, we link these definitional features to the Volunteer Process Model, which depicts volunteerism as a process with three sequential and interactive stages (antecedents, experiences, and consequences) and at multiple levels of analysis. Then, we use this model to organize the empirical literature on volunteerism and selected work on social movements. Finally, we discuss implications for social policy issues relevant to individuals, organizations, communities, and societies.
Is there a link between adolescents' experience of joy and fulfillment and their increased openness and commitment to the world and other human beings? A series of comparative studies was conducted investigating different adolescent samples according to cultural background (American Christians, Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs), socio-economic status (low, high, disadvantaged), religiosity (observant, secular), and exceptionality (hearing impaired) and at different stages of prosocial involvement (non-involved, registered, and involved volunteers). Over and above group differences, the findings from all samples demonstrated that adolescents who realize positive experiences in greater depth and intensity, are also differentiated by a stronger desire to contribute to society and/or to be devoted to some aim beyond self. Implications for educators in fostering the social responsibility and self-fulfillment of young people from different backgrounds were discussed.
This study addresses the question of whether the effects of volunteer service during the undergraduate years persist once students leave college. Data are drawn from 12,376 students attending 209 institutions who were followed up four and nine years after college entry. Results show that even when pre-college service participation is controlled, student participation in volunteer service during the undergraduate years is positively associated with a variety of cognitive and affective outcomes measured nine years after entering college.
In knowledge-intensive settings such as product or software development, fluid teams of individuals with different sets of experience are tasked with projects that are critical to the success of their organizations. Although building teams from individuals with diverse prior experience is increasingly necessary, prior work examining the relationship between experience and performance fails to find a consistent effect of diversity in experience on performance. The problem is that diversity in experience improves a team's information processing capacity and knowledge base, but also creates coordination challenges. We hypothesize that team familiarity - team members' prior experience working with one another - is one mechanism that helps teams leverage the benefits of diversity in team member experience by alleviating coordination problems that diversity creates. We use detailed project- and individual-level data from an Indian software services firm to examine the effects of team familiarity and diversity in experience on performance for software development projects. We find the interaction of team familiarity and diversity in experience has a complementary effect on a project being delivered on time and on budget. In team familiarity, we identify one mechanism for capturing the performance benefits of diversity in experience and provide insight into how the management of experience accumulation affects team performance.
Using two waves of panel data from Americans' Changing Lives (House 1995) (N = 2,681), we examine the relationships between volunteer work in the community and six aspects of personal well-being: happiness, life satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of control over life, physical health, and depression. Prior research has more often examined the effects of voluntary memberships than of volunteer work, has used cross-sectional rather than longitudinal data, and, when longitudinal, has emphasized social causation over selection effects. Focusing only on the consequences of volunteer work overlooks the antecedents of human agency. People with greater personality resources and better physical and mental health should be more likely to seek (or to be sought for) community service. Hence, we examine both selection and social causation effects. Results show that volunteer work indeed enhances all six aspects of well-being and, conversely, people who have greater well-being invest more hours in volunteer service. Given this, further understanding of self- versus social-selection processes seems an important next step. Do positive, healthy people actively seek out volunteer opportunities, or do organizations actively recruit individuals of these types (or both)? Explaining how positive consequences flow from volunteer service may offer a useful counterpoint to stress theory, which has focused primarily on negative life experiences and their sequelae.
The ability of the emotion gratitude to shape costly prosocial behavior was examined in three studies employing interpersonal emotion inductions and requests for assistance. Study 1 demonstrated that gratitude increases efforts to assist a benefactor even when such efforts are costly (i.e., hedonically negative), and that this increase differs from the effects of a general positive affective state. Additionally, mediational analyses revealed that gratitude, as opposed to simple awareness of reciprocity norms, drove helping behavior. Furthering the theory that gratitude mediates prosocial behavior, Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 and demonstrated gratitude's ability to function as an incidental emotion by showing it can increase assistance provided to strangers. Study 3 revealed that this incidental effect dissipates if one is made aware of the true cause of the emotional state. Implications of these findings for the role of gratitude in building relationships are discussed.
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