Praxis+Phase+II

The Demand for Volunteer Labor: A Study of Hospital Volunteers || Article 2- Qualitative Research Dispositional and Organizational Influences on Sustained Volunteerism: An Interactionist Perspective || What is being studied? · Identify the Research Question(s) and/or Hypotheses · How clear are the questions? · How are variables defined? || · The author is looking at organizations such as hospitals in Toronto to see what influences their demand for volunteer labor. Is it based on the organizations need or by the cost of utilizing volunteer labor. Also other factors such as productivity, output and labor market influence the demand for volunteers. · The question is clearly stated yet how they are to find out what influences an organizations need for volunteer labor is somewhat unclear. · In the first paragraph the author outlines the variables clearly. Saying that the factors that influence the demand for volunteers are productivity, output, labor market, demand and cost of volunteers. || · The author is looking at different character traits that influence someone to volunteer. The author is looking at influences such as race, religion and personality traits. The first part of the article is dedicated to reviewing the traits that influence volunteering. The other part concerns how organizational variables are related to volunteerism. · The question isn’t clearly stated, at least to me. I find it rather difficult to understand what the author is trying to find out. There could be an easier way of saying it. · The variables for this article are somewhat clearly stated. The author talks about some major factors that could possible influence someone’s volunteer background such as race, religion and personality traits || · How are subjects chosen? · How many are studied? · Who are they? · What sampling procedure is used (if applicable)? || · For this article, the author chose to look at a specific kind of organization, hospitals in Toronto. He chooses to look at this nonprofit organization for most of the study. · 28 hospitals in Toronto were used for this study. They use more than 2 million volunteers per year. · I believe the sampling method being used is a selective method. The author chooses to only study hospitals in Toronto thus he is only using a specific group. || · “These studies contained relatively small samples of volunteers who worked in a restricted number of service organizations. More recently, I was able to use the Internet to collect data from a much larger sample of volunteers working in a wide variety of service organizations in the United States” (Penner 452). · Again I feel like this article uses the selective method for sampling. The author mainly looked at volunteers that he could have a one-on-on interview with along with some online surveys. || What do others say about the subject? · Does the literature review provide enough background for this research? · Is a case made for the research? || · The literature review for this article is mostly based around finding out the outcome for the volunteers, what are they getting out of this situation? It also goes into the actually costs to businesses to get this free labor, training, supplies, office space, etc. · Yes, it poses a good view on how there is actually a cost to free labor. This in turn would help explain businesses use of volunteers as a labor source. || · The literature review of this article talks about two main factors that help influence a volunteer’s behavior; individual member’s perceptions about the way they are being treated by the organization and the organization’s reputation and personal practice. · Yes, the author addresses some of the influences on someone to volunteer. He makes sure to cite other works as well to help support his article. || How is the research being done? · What research method is being used? · How is data collected · How clear are the procedures for others to use? || · The article states that most of the data is being gathered by hospital records of money spent on volunteers. There was also a comparison of the hospitals and their breakdown for volunteer spending. There is also a lot of referring to other articles in the past. · The author uses a number of other sources and articles to help support his claims but he also does research into the cost efficiency of volunteers. The article also has a few graphs to support his opinion. · Not very clear. He doesn’t give a step by step analysis of what exactly he did. It is more of the information was gathered and then analyzed to come up with this article. || · Most of the information that is used in the article was gathered from one-on-one interviews along with many surveys that were posted online. The author contacted many different volunteers in many different ways. · The article was made up of the data the author collected from interviews and surveys along with other article that supported his idea. It was a mixture of these that helped put together his argument. · The author does go into some detail about how he collected the data yet not as much as I was hoping for. He tells of how he got the information, from online surveys and interviews. Yet he doesn’t go into much detail after that. || What are the results of the study? · How are findings displayed? · How are results presented in a manner that’s easy to understand? || · The findings are broken down into 3 categories: the CEOs perspective, demand for volunteer labor, and determinants of demand for volunteers. · The findings were easy to understand because they split them up into three distinct sections of information. The first two were the main findings while the third was the summery of what the findings meant. || · The findings were organized into a graph that showed a model of how organization can attract and keep volunteers. It wasn’t as easy to understand the findings as the first article. Yet the graph was a helpful visual on the process of retaining volunteers. · As I said earlier, the findings weren’t as organized or easy to read as the first article yet the graph gave a great overview on what all the information meant for volunteerism. || What is discovered? · How are explanations provided for findings? · What recommendations are provided, or implications for practice and future research? || · The author put the findings into 5 major independent variables that affect the number of volunteers an organization hires. There were graphs and short explanations that helped the reader understand the importance of the findings. · There was no recommendation from the author as to how the information should be used. Rather it was up to the reader and organization to determine the importance of the information. || · The author created a graph that represented the best outcome for organizations to use to recruit and keep volunteers. The author even gives a reference on how to conduct this same experiment and get the same results. · The author is suggesting how organizations can appeal to volunteers more. The article also gives good examples as to how to keep volunteers and to get more skilled volunteers. This article was probably dedicated to finding what types of people are volunteering and how to appeal to more people. ||
 * || Article 1- Quantitative Research
 * Complete article citation || Handy, F., & Srinivasan, N. (n.d.). Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. //SAGE Journals online//. Retrieved February 19, 2011, from nvs.sagepub.com/content/34/4/491.abstract || Penner, L. (n.d.). Dispositional and Organizational Influences on Sustained Volunteerism: An Interactionist Perspective - Penner - 2002 - Journal of Social Issues - Wiley Online Library. //Wiley Online Library//. Retrieved February 22, 2011, from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1540-4560.00270/pdf ||
 * Introduction to the Study:
 * Who is being studied?
 * Literature Review:
 * Method for data collection:
 * Presentation of Findings:
 * Discussion of Results: