Volunteer Motivation

Abstract of Motivations of Hungarian Volunteers – an assessment of the standardising survey of the Hungarian Volunteer Motivation Inventory

Our research seeks to continue the new international trends of assessing the motivational factors of volunteers. On the one hand, this study has based on a multifactorial (15 factors in 59 Likert scale questions) inventory. On the other, we carried out a large sample size (n=3000) survey of volunteers engaged in different activities and constituting – from an organisational perspective – a representative sample of the volunteer population. Our underlining aim was to assess both primary motivations that are important for the maintenance of volunteering, and background motivations that indicate the dynamics beyond the volunteer engagement process of the person. At the same time, we sought to standardise an inventory of motivations that could be gainfully in volunteer management, crucially contributing towards the more efficient recruitment, deployment and tasking of volunteers. Regarding the primary motivations, our findings highlights that Hungarian volunteering is strongly values-based, although less motivated by social norms and not at all by religious/spiritual conviction. Among the background motivations, the joy of volunteering, the need for community and adherence to values has been significant. This shows that values-based action by Hungarian volunteers primarily attached to a social cause and/or group, which triggers the altruistic, helping conduct of a volunteer. We further find that in volunteer management, the crucial demographic factor determining motivations is age, while we were also able to distinguish groups guided by activity, social values and community motivations.
Keywords: volunteer motivation, primray motivations, background motivations, volunteer motivation inventory, voluntary management

Anna Mária Bartal – Zoltán Kmetty

Civil Szemle 2011., 4. 7-30.

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Abstract of What does the kaleidoscope reveal? – Adapting, developing and testing the Volunteer Motivation Inventory in Hungary

While volunteer motivation is an internationally well-researched field, there has been little by way of analytical insight into volunteer motivation in Hungary. The practical relevance of this issue is all the more acute by empirical evidence, e.g. in the 2008 EVS, that the number of persons active in volunteering is sharply decreasing. It is therefore more important than ever to provide voluntary organisations with a set of effective  methodologies for recruitment, maintenance and employment of volunteers. Such methodologies, however, first require a thorough understanding of what motivates people to take up voluntary work. For this purpose, we adapted the Volunteer Motivation Inventory developed by Esmond and Dunlop (2004), which measures ten motivational factors with 44 statements, to be better applicable in Hungary, and supplemented it where so  needed. This was achieved by a multi-stage methodology. In the first stage, the inventory was translated and tested. In the second, it was enhanced by three motivational factors we deemed to be particularly relevant for the motivation of volunteers in Hungary, namely religion, the community/local authority and governmental failure. Finally, the adapted and enhanced questionnaire (which measures 13 motivational factors with 53 statements) was tested on two sample populations, one (n=121) homogeneous, while another (n=89) heterogeneous, in its volunteer activity. By way of statistical testing, it was concluded that both the adapted and the newly added motivational factors are reliable indicators and capable of large sample-size testing and standardising.

Keywords: volunteer, volunteer motivation, volunteer sector research.

Anna Mária Bartal

Civil Szemle, 2010. 1. 5-33.

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