1
Stephanie Heath
PA 706
Religious Organizations: No Longer Just for Praying
May 18, 2011
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Abstract:
In this paper I will explore past research done in regards to public service motivation and what
motivates people to volunteer. I will also report on my findings on my research topic which is proving
that volunteers are more likely to volunteer at religious organizations than any others. My hypothesis
which is, if volunteers are more likely to spend their time at religious organizations, then volunteerism at
these places must be highest. I looked at several research articles that were mostly based on the
motivation behind those that volunteer and a little about what kinds of volunteering such as people
donating money or time. Based on the data I found, that is a strong relationship between volunteerism,
religious organizations, and volunteering with these organizations. I started writing this paper last
semester in PA 705, and will finish it in PA 706 with my research data, findings and conclusions.
Introduction:
I have always been interested in volunteerism, and what motivates people to volunteer. I first
became interested in this area of public administration when I was in high school and chose to study
John F. Kennedy, Jr. for a class project. While learning about his political life I became very interested in
his starting the Peace Corps and what he did to make that dream of his come true. Since then the idea
of volunteerism and what motivates people to volunteer is intriguing to me. I’ve also become intrigued
by volunteers and volunteerism while working for a nonprofit organization and while studying public
administration. Many nonprofit organizations function only on volunteers and if it wasn’t for them
some of them wouldn’t function as an organization. I’ve wondered what has motivated this special
category of people to volunteer their time to certain organizations. For this research project I looked at
volunteer motivations because if we can get a grasp on what motivates people to volunteer we can
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maybe get people to volunteer more often and help nonprofit organizations function better. I think it is
human nature to feel a drawn to your religious organization and to spend time helping it function and
thrive. Religion is a very popular in this country and it seems that there is always something to help out
with at a local church. There is this idea of those that public service employees are motivated by “the
call” and that this call is something that only certain people hear. James Perry and Lois Wise defined
public service motivation as “an individual’s predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or
uniquely in public institutions and organizations. Does this mean they are more motivated to volunteer
when they feel compassion during times of need? So first I wanted to look at the motivation of public
service people to see if I could gain knowledge on religious organizations being a factor on where people
decide to spend their time volunteering.
Background Literature
The article entitled “Walking the Walk” of Public Service Motivation: Public Employees and
Charitable Gifts of Time, Blood and Money, is where I started my research. This article is by David J.
Houston and comes to us from the University of Tennessee. He explores the idea that Public Service
Employees often “talk the talk’ but do they “walk the walk” of the public service motive? Are public
service employees more likely than private sector employees to volunteer, donate blood, money and/or
time, or engage in other public service activities? The data used in this study is from the 2002 General
Social Survey where multivariate logistic regression models are estimated to examine self-reported gifts
of time, blood and money to charitable organizations (Houston, 2005). The primary focus of Houston’s
research has been on identifying the nature of PSM and asking if it indeed is a characteristic of public
employees. The data for this project are key variables previously used in the analysis coming from
modules added to the 2002 survey and were administered to 1,796 respondents-or 65 percent of the
entire sample. Of the 1,796 total respondents who were asked questions that are the basis of this
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analysis, missing data on one or more questions reduces the final sample to 1,301 for the bivariate
analysis and 1,142 for the multivariate analysis. First the data categorized respondents based on their
sector of employment. The study showed that 17 percent of respondents were classified as government
workers, 7 percent as nonprofit employees and 76 percent as employed in private companies. In terms
of the frequency of the three charitable activities the most common was donating money to charity
which was reported by 78 percent of the respondents. Slightly less than half indicated that they had
volunteered their time for a charity during the last twelve months. The least common activity was
donating blood which forces the volunteer to face some fears such as needles and blood. I can see why
this act would be the least favored. 17 percent of the respondents engaged in none of the activities
over the year. The profession of public administration is typically viewed as a special calling and
characterized as public service motivation, which is a commitment to the public interest, service to
others and self-sacrifice. The findings reported in this article indicate that public employees are more
likely to volunteer for charity and donate blood and these findings support the hypothesis that PSM is
more prominent in the public than private organizations (Houston, 2002). The way the data was
presented I don’t see any serious threats to validity but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. The
study is well planned and executed based on the information in this article. It also seems evident that
public service employees not only “talk the talk” but they also “walk the walk” of public service.
The next article to aid in my hypothesis is entitled Building Social Capital: Civic Attitudes and
Behavior of Public Servants by Gene Brewer in 2003 from the University of Georgia. This article is much
like the previous one in that it looks at public servants and their attitudes and behaviors that are closely
related to social capital which is defined as attributes such as social trust, social altruism, equality,
tolerance, humanitarianism and civic participation (Brewer, 2003). The study will assess the civic
attitudes and behavior of public servants and other citizens, compares public servants and other citizens
with regard to several important civic attitudes and behaviors that are closely related to social capital.
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The study implies that public servants have attributes closely related to social capital which are the six
characteristics mentioned previously. The research applied is a multivariate model which estimates the
strength of public employment as a predictor of civic participation. The results here also show that
public servants are more altruistic and civic-minded than are other citizens, and they are more likely to
participate in civic affairs (Brewer, 2003). The data for this study comes from the 1996 American
National Election Study conducted by the Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research,
University of Michigan. This survey is the most relevant because it provides measure of all the relevant
concepts. The survey instrument includes a question that identifies public servants and other citizens,
an assortment of demographic variables, and a battery of questions that probe civic attitudes and
behavior. The data set consists of 1,174 cases that are to represent a sample of the American
electorate. The key variable to sort the individuals for the study comes from the survey question:
Are/were you employed by a federal, state or local government? The sample ended up including 339
public servants and 1,375 other citizens (Brewer, 2003). On all of the five items, public servants score
approximately one-third higher than other citizens score. It also confirms that public servants are more
actively engaged in all five forms of civic affairs that are other citizens. This study shows that public
employees are more civic minded than are other citizens which in turn implies that public employees are
more likely to participate in civic activities such as volunteerism. This is a clear implication that public
employees are motivated by a strong desire to perform volunteer activities.
Keeping along the same vain as what motivates a public servant the next article is entitled
Antecedents of Public Service Motivation by James L. Perry from Indiana University in 1997. The goals of
this study are to advance the validation of a measure of public service motivation by reporting
correlates of the scale and the second goal is to investigate several hypotheses about the antecedents of
public service motivation (Perry, 1997). During the time of this study there was little empirical evidence
that discussed public service motivation. The methods for this study were gathered by using a self-
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administered survey, and there were 396 useable survey responses, but listwise selection of cases used
in regressions resulted in 296 cases for the analyses (Perry, 1997). This article is interesting in that it
looks at completely different antecedents of PSM. Perry looks at parental socialization, religious
socialization, professional identification, political ideology and individual demographics. One could infer
from the differences in the first two articles compared with this article that the research based upon
social capital is only about 8 to 10 years old. The data in this study suggests that an individual’s public
service motivation develops from exposure to a variety of experiences, some associated with childhood,
some associated with religion, and some associated with professional life (Perry, 1997). Perry concludes
by saying that a broader study and expanded variables will help to explain larger parts of the variance of
PSM and should help to identify ways to encourage all people to become engaged in public service. He
also states that future research should seek to identify and investigate a range of behaviors that might
be associated with PSM (Perry, 1997). In the first two articles I discussed the behaviors of PSM are
studied and concluded that behaviors such as compassion and altruism weigh greatly on the desire of
PSM, and are large motivators when individuals engage civically.
Next I looked at an article by Susan R. Jones and Kathleen E. Hill from Ohio State out of The
Journal of Higher Education. It is entitled Understanding Patterns of Commitment: Student Motivation
for Community Service Involvement. I wanted to look at student volunteerism and what motivates high
school as well as college students to volunteer and if it goes along with my hypotheses. This study looks
at why students participate in community service activities. Findings from a 2000 survey of first-year
college students report that just over 81 percent of students had performed volunteer work in the past
year (Jones and Hill, 2003). That being said, only 22.7 percent of students indicated that it was
important to participate in a community action program and 30.9 percent indicated they valued
becoming a community leader (Jones and Hill, 2003). This data raises questions as to why high-school
students are volunteering, the motives high-school and college students provide for involvement and
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the authors also raise the question of the relationship between community service and that service
transferring those people into college students who volunteer and engage civically. The authors also
state that some research suggests that patterns exist between the high-school volunteers carrying over
into college very little are known as to what motivates them, or the meaning behind the motivation to
volunteer. The authors used a methodology of exploratory focus which led to a constructivist approach
to the design. The authors state the reasoning behind this methodology as well-suited because of the
aim of the research was to discover and understand students’ construction of meaning and their
perceptions about their own reasoning behind their participation. College students were chosen, that
had a history of volunteerism during their high-school years, by directors of community service
programs at Ohio Campus Compact. The sample ended up consisting of 24 students, 12 of which are
currently participating in community service, and 12 who had volunteered in high-school but have since
ceased since entering into college. The strategy for collecting data was in-depth, semistructured
interviewing on the campuses of each student (Jones and Hill, 2003). All data were analyzed using
constant comparative method characteristic of grounded theory methodology (Jones and Hill, 2003).
The authors found that high-school involvement was almost always motivated by external factors, such
as influence of family and friends or a school requirement. Some said they were involved in community
service because it made them feel good about themselves. One student stated “I think I have the
means, the capability, and the intelligence to affect social change, so I have to do it;…there’s no way I
can just sit and watch things happen” (Jones and Hill, 2003). There could be some validity threats here
as high school and college aged persons can be unpredictable and most often are dealing with personal
issues such as moving away from home for the first time which can effect decisions made in their
professional lives. I think this demographic is difficult one to test.
The next set of articles I chose, are focused on volunteer involvement after the terrorist attack
on September 11, 2001. I chose an article by Beth Gazley and Jeffery L. Brudney from the Public
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Administration Review in 2005. It is entitled Volunteer Involvement in Local Government after
September 11: The Continuing Question of Capacity. The article reports on a 2003 survey of volunteer
involvement in Georgia local government, which followed a similar 1990 study and provides a rare
opportunity to examine long-term trends in public volunteerism (Gazley and Brudney, 2005). The
authors begin by stating that the events of September 11, 2001 have had a small but generally positive
effect on volunteer utilization, but there increase in public managers’ concerns that they lack the
funding or staff to utilize volunteers suggests that governmental capacity remains the principal obstacle
to greater volunteer involvement in local governments (Gazley and Brudney, 2005). This particular area
of volunteerism research is uncertain for a few reasons. The media and public agencies base
volunteerism rates on the number of people who sign up to volunteer. There is no research as to the
capacity these people are utilized or if they are at all. The second reason is while the supply of
volunteers is examined most often no one has really looked at the demand side and whether or not
there is an existing infrastructure in place to recruit, train, deploy and supervise within the agency. The
data for the research in this article was gathered by a mail survey of chief administrators of Georgia’s
661 local governments. The sampling frame was 159 counties, 499 incorporated cities, and three
consolidated governments within the state. The return rate was 48 percent and the authors state that
while the risk of nonresponse bias must always be acknowledged, evidence of respondent self-selection
was not found in this study (Gazley and Brudney, 2005). The authors state that the first finding of note
was as they had hypothesized that in the 2003 study where there was a marked increase in volunteer
utilization in Georgia between 1990 and 2003.
The 2003 survey asked city and county administrators whether the terrorist attack on
September 11, 2001, showed an increase or decrease in activities in their local government. This study
is the first to look into the government or organizational side of the volunteerism equation. The authors
also state that this study will be useful to those who are interested in volunteer trends and policy issues
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related to volunteerism within government, which is exactly my focus not only in this paper but in my
career as a public administrator. It seems as though based on the findings public managers seem to be
interested in expanding their capacity to engage volunteers.
Next I chose an article called 9/11 Impact on Teenage Values by Edward F. Murphy, Jr. et al from
the Journal of Business Ethics in 2006. Their main idea and research question is “Did the September 11,
2001 terrorist attack on the U.S. cause the values of teenagers in the U.S. to change?” As research has
shown in the previous articles values play a large role in the act of volunteerism. Did teenagers’
previously important self-concerned values become less important and their survival and safety values
become more important (Murphy et al, 2006)? Research on this age demographic is highly important as
this age group will be our next managers, employees, students and customers. To see where there
thoughts and values lie will be extremely important to current and future public managers. Since 2001
to 2006 there had been no studies on this demographic so the authors here try to fill that gap by
exploring the values of a random sample of 1000 U.S. teenagers in grades 9 to 12 pre- and post-9/11,
using a demographic questionnaire and the Rokeach Value Survey (Murphy et al, 2006). This Study used
a descriptive cross-sectional survey research design using stratified random sampling techniques to
explore whether statistically significant differences existed in the terminal and instrumental values of
U.S. high school students pre- and post- September 11, 2001 (Murphy et al., 2006). The surveys were
administered between September 11, 2001 and September 20, 2001. It consisted of a random sample
of 500 teenagers in Northern California. The authors developed before and after categories so each
survey instrument before the attack was assigned a value of one and each instrument after the attack
was assigned a value of two. Based on the findings safety and security values moved up in the hierarchy
of needs that replaces previously important values of self-actualization and esteem values. For example,
‘a world of peace’ moved from a previous bottom five to a top five value. Survival, safety or security
value also moved from the bottom to the top (Murphy, et al., 2006). The authors state, and I agree, that
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there needs to be more research on this topic. This data was only taken once, within the same month
that the attack happened. There needs to be another round of data taken from the same individuals.
The authors suggest longitudinal research that occurs every six months and I am inclined to agree. I also
believe that this was and still is a difficult time in American’s lives and there absolutely needs to be more
research done to test these theories.
In my research I still really wanted to look at the motivation behind volunteers as my research
question is really about what motivates people to volunteer, what types of people are more likely to
volunteer and during what time are these people more likely to do so. I chose another article about
public service motivation entitled The Role of Organization in Fostering Public Service Motivation by
Donald P. Moynihan and Sanjay K. Pandey from Public Administration Review in 2007. It is written in
response to an article written by James Perry and tests his theory and examines the role that
organizational factors play in shaping public service motivation, based on responses from a national
survey of state government health and human service managers. The research shows that public service
motivation is strongly related to education and a membership in a professional organization. Perry and
Wise provide the widely accepted definition of public service management: “an individual’s
predisposition to respond to motives grounded primarily or uniquely in public institutions and
organizations.” (Perry and Wise, 1990). The authors here add to the limited empirical research on PSM
by testing in part the theory proposed by Perry (2000) and going deeper in the theory by focusing more
attention on the role of the institution. The authors have six hypotheses that were tested. They begin
with, “Level of education is positively related to PSM,” “Membership in a professional society affects an
employee’s PSM,” “Organizational culture affects an employee’s PSM,” “Employees who experience a
hierarchical culture have lower level of PSM” and etc. In addition to foregoing variables, the authors
employ a number of demographic controls: gender, age and income. These controls led to some
unexpected results in Perry’s 1997 study, and consequently, there is value in seeking to replicate his
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findings (Moynihan and Pandey, 2007). The data for this study were collected as part of Phase II of the
National Administration Studies Project during 2002-03. The response rate for the survey was
approximately 53 percent (Moynihan and Pandey, 2007). The survey included three of Perry’s four
measure of PSM: attraction to policy making, commitment to public interest/civic duty, and compassion.
The authors administered the survey to managers working in public health when Perry surveyed a much
wider variety including graduate and undergraduate students. The authors found their models were
consistent with Perry’s results which offer a strong support for the importance of the sociohistorical
context, but also attraction to policy making and a commitment to public interest. The authors also
found that length of organizational membership was negatively associated with PSM (Moynihan and
Pandey, 2007). The most powerful predictors of PSM are the sociohistorical variables: higher levels of
education and professional membership. These results do reinforce Perry’s findings. The authors also
state that future research might benefit from looking at how the educational process imparts values of
PSM rather than just looking at the level of education. I agree with this idea and think that in doing that
it could eliminate any issues with validity this study may have.
Next I looked at Volunteer Work and Well-Being by Peggy A. Thoits and Lyndi N. Hewitt out of
Journal of Health and Social Behavior from 2001. The authors examine the relationship between
volunteer work in the community and the six aspects of person well-being which are: happiness, life
satisfaction, self-esteem, sense of control over life, physical health and depression. The authors
examine both selection and social causation effects. The main research question here is do positive,
healthy people actively seek out volunteer opportunities, or do organizations actively recruit individuals
of these types? There has been little research on how volunteering effects the physical or psychological
well-being of the volunteer. Researchers are eager to demonstrate that social involvements benefit
individuals net of the physical or emotional factors that might have selected those individuals into
volunteer work in the first place (Thoits and Lyndi, 2001). The authors will argue that individuals’
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personal resources and well-being both facilitate their involvement in volunteer work and are
subsequently enhanced by such work. The purposes of their paper are to re-examine general well-being
as an antecedent and a consequence of volunteer work in the community and to focus attention on the
neglected topic of agency (Thoits and Lyndi, 2001). For the purpose of this analysis the authors use a
two-wave panel study based on a national sample of adults. A multistage stratified area probability
sample was drawn of individuals who were 25 years or older, living in the continental United States. The
individuals were interviewed with questions about their volunteer history in the past 12 months. They
were coded 1 for a “yes” answer and zero for a “no” answer. They were also asked about hours spent
volunteering. The authors found that the results were generally consistent with previous studies. They
found that married men and women, whites, those with higher education, those with greater family
income, employed persons, and those with children at home volunteer more hours; unmarried men,
unmarried women, and older individuals volunteer fewer hours (Thoits and Hewitt, 2001). This area of
study will benefit from more research just to see if the results hold true. Do people of higher
socioeconomic standings volunteer more now, ten years later, less or the same?
Research Data and Findings
After weeks of searching I was able to find data on a website called Volunteering in America. It can be
found at the web address: www.volunteeringinamerica.org. This website has data at the country level,
city, state and county level. It has data on hours during the years 1974, 1989 and 2002-2009. I was able
to download the variables I wanted into an excel format and then into SPSS, where I did a regression
analysis. My first instinct was to run each individual organization type as the dependent variable and
use volunteer types, such as race, ethnicity, gender and socioeconomic status as the independent
variables. This showed me the relationships between each of the variables, but it didn’t show me that
volunteerism at religious organizations was any stronger than at a civic organization, or at a hospital for
example. So, my next instinct was to run types of volunteers as the dependent variable, and the type of
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organizations as the independent variable. This change gave me the results I was looking for and
allowed me to show the relationship between types of volunteers, and which organization they chose to
spend their time with.
The first analyses I ran was looking at the relationship between volunteer hours by gender, female and
those who participate in volunteerism at a sports or arts organizations, hospital, educational, civic or
religious organizations. My adjusted R square is low at 27%.
Model Summary
Model
R
d
R Square
.593a
1
Adjusted R
Std. Error of the
Square
Estimate
.351
.279
8.045
i
m
e
n
s
i
o
n
0
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
ANOVAb
Model
1
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
Regression
1575.870
5
315.174
Residual
2912.757
45
64.728
Total
4488.627
50
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
b. Dependent Variable: vhbgf
F
4.869
Sig.
.001a
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Coefficientsa
Model
Standardized
Unstandardized Coefficients
B
1
Coefficients
Std. Error
Beta
(Constant)
-46.309
38.904
civic
187.268
108.067
educa
114.018
hosp
t
Sig.
-1.190
.240
.331
1.733
.090
58.701
.480
1.942
.058
-24.938
91.569
-.042
-.272
.787
religious
141.761
42.108
1.337
3.367
.002
sporart
275.377
146.812
.417
1.876
.067
a. Dependent Variable: vhbgf
My R square is low, but in comparison to the other variables, the religious organization variable
is the most significant at .002.
Model Summary
Model
R
d
R Square
.454a
1
Adjusted R
Std. Error of the
Square
Estimate
.206
.116
6.552
i
m
e
n
s
i
o
n
0
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
ANOVAb
Model
1
Sum of Squares
Regression
df
Mean Square
489.969
5
97.994
Residual
1888.851
44
42.928
Total
2378.820
49
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
b. Dependent Variable: vhbrw
F
2.283
Sig.
.063a
15
Coefficientsa
Model
Standardized
Unstandardized Coefficients
B
1
(Constant)
Coefficients
Std. Error
Beta
-33.482
32.489
62.667
88.039
educa
103.944
hosp
t
Sig.
-1.031
.308
.147
.712
.480
48.420
.572
2.147
.037
58.248
74.621
.127
.781
.439
religious
109.201
36.357
1.274
3.004
.004
sporart
322.711
123.865
.662
2.605
.012
civic
a. Dependent Variable: vhbrw
Again with this table my adjusted R square is rather low, but religious organization is the most
significant among the types of organizations at .004.
The last table I looked at was using non-latino as my dependent variable and the same
organizations as my independent variables.
Model Summary
Model
R
d
1
.432a
R Square
.186
Adjusted R
Std. Error of the
Square
Estimate
.094
i
m
e
n
s
i
o
n
0
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
6.421
16
ANOVAb
Model
1
Sum of Squares
Regression
df
Mean Square
415.626
5
83.125
Residual
1813.894
44
41.225
Total
2229.520
49
F
Sig.
2.016
.095a
a. Predictors: (Constant), sporart, hosp, educa, civic, religious
b. Dependent Variable: vhbethnl
Coefficientsa
Model
Standardized
Unstandardized Coefficients
B
1
(Constant)
Std. Error
-24.040
31.838
98.367
86.274
educa
101.798
hosp
religious
civic
sporart
Coefficients
Beta
t
Sig.
-.755
.454
.238
1.140
.260
47.449
.579
2.145
.037
18.815
73.126
.042
.257
.798
99.472
35.629
1.199
2.792
.008
216.457
121.383
.458
1.783
.081
a. Dependent Variable: vhbethnl
Once again the only significance is with my coefficients table with my beta number and
significance of .008.
Conclusion
It seems that more research needs to be done in this area. I feel that my data is conflicting but
does show that the most significant is the religious organization variable that I chose. It would
make sense in general that these organizations recruit the highest number of volunteers, without
having done any research. What is it that is so motivating in these organizations? Whatever it is
needs to be zeroed in on and dissected to be able to transfer those same types of motivation
techniques across all types of organizations in the public sector, especially in non-profits. Some
non-profits only function based on their volunteers. If public administrators can harness this
same type of motivation, then it only means bigger and better things for the public and non-profit
world.
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References
Brewer, G. (2003). Building Social Capital: Civic Attitudes and Behavior of Public Servants. Journal of
Public Administration Research and Theory, 13(1), 5-26.
Gazley, B. & Brudney, J. (2005). Volunteer Involvement in Local Government after September 11: The
Continuing Question of Capacity. Public Administration Review, 65(2), 131-142.
Houston, D. (2005). “Walking the Walk” of Public Service Motivation: Public Employees and Charitable
Gifts of Time, Blood and Money. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, JPART 16:67-86.
Jones, S. & Hill, K. (2003). Understanding Patterns of Commitment. Journal of Higher Education, 74(5),
516-539.
Kirlin, J. & Kirlin, M. (2002). Effective Government-Citizen Connections through Greater Civic
Engagement. Public Administration Review, 62, 80-85.
Moynihan, D. & Pandey, S. (2007). The Role of Organizations in Fostering Public Service Motivation.
Public Administration Review, 40-53.
Murphy, E. & Woodhull, M. & Post, B. & Post, C. & Teeple, W. & Anderson, K. (2006). 9/11 Impact on
Teenage Values. Journal of Business Ethics, 69(4), 399-421.
Perry, J. (1997). Antecedents of Public Service Motivation. Journal of Public Administration Research
and Theory, 7(2), 181-197.
Thoits, P. & Hewitt, L. Volunteer Work and Well-Being. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 42(2),
115-131