Narrowing ‘Bathtub Volunteerism’ in Singapore and Beyond Through High-quality Adolescent and Young Adult Volunteer Experiences
Date
2024-08-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Young
Abstract
High-quality volunteerism experiences in adolescence are associated with higher volunteerism later in life, yet less is understood about contextualized features of these experiences, especially when school-based programmes are mandatory. Relatedly, narrowing ‘bathtub volunteerism’ (i.e., increasing postgraduation youth volunteerism and shortening the period between volunteer disengagement and resumption) remains a research gap. Therefore, using in-depth retrospective qualitative interviews with 50 young Singaporeans, we aimed to understand features of high-quality volunteer experiences in schools (among adolescents) and communities (among young adults). Findings indicated that within a national context of compulsory school-based volunteerism, ‘bathtub volunteerism’ was narrowed efficaciously when adolescents and young adults were exposed to high-quality school- and community-based volunteer experiences, respectively. High-quality school-based experiences granted student autonomy and facilitated empathy development. Community-based ones combined cause selectivity, personal meaning and close interpersonal relationships. Our findings offer insights to raise volunteerism rates by developing and propagating high-quality volunteer experiences.
Description
This article was originally published in Young. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/11033088241258395. © 2024 The Author(s).
Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-Commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the Sage and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords
adolescence, community, school, volunteerism, young adulthood
Citation
Kwan, J. Y., & Wray-Lake, L. (2024). Narrowing ‘Bathtub Volunteerism’ in Singapore and Beyond Through High-quality Adolescent and Young Adult Volunteer Experiences. YOUNG, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/11033088241258395