| This project investigated college student volunteerism and the role that the average amount of time spent in volunteer activities adds to a predictive model of psychological well-being. The different psychological benefits studied included career self-efficacy, hope in social relationships, hope in academic performance, hope in work, dispositional hope, optimism and gratitude. A total of 383 undergraduate male and female students from a large mid-western University participated in the study. The data attained from these students were analyzed through correlations, hierarchical regression, and analysis of variance. Results indicated that all of the measures of psychological well-being positively and significantly correlated with each other. Significant correlations between demographic variables and some of the measures of psychological well-being also were found. In relation to volunteer service, a significant correlation was found between time spent in volunteer activities and a student's hope in academics. However, after taking key demographic variables into consideration, time spent in volunteer service was not found to be significantly predictive of scores on measures of psychological well-being. Post-hoc analysis of the data indicated that when students level of volunteer experience is collapsed into groups of no volunteer experience, one to ten hours of volunteer experience a month, and more than 10 hours of volunteer experience a month, some significant differences are shown between groups on measures of hope in relationships, hope in academics, hope in work, dispositional hope and gratitude. |
