YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
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Thursday Mar 15, 2007
Our survey says...
It seems to me that one of the great myths about volunteering in recent years has been that young people are reluctant to get involved.
It all started when the 1997 National Survey of Volunteering found a ‘sharp reduction’ in volunteering by people aged 18-24. With politicians eager to address the perceived alienation of young people, action was taken. First there was Millennium Volunteers and then the Russell Commission (leading to youth volunteering charity v).
I don’t know about the methodology of the 1997 research but we’ve just had the results of our latest survey of more than 700 users of YouthNet’s volunteering website do-it.org.uk, and it shows that 29.76% are aged 19-25, and more than 55% are under 30. Hardly a crisis of youth, and these results are in line with what we’ve found on do-it since we first started collecting data several years ago.
While YouthNet is a youth charity, the website is open to all and does not have any bias towards young people. So why are young people coming forward in such large numbers?
Or should I say ‘young women’. Only 21.39% of users taking the survey were male, confirming a gender split that has been apparent ever since do-it first started. Other interesting findings include the fact that 9.38% have a disability and almost 25% describe their ethnicity as something other than White British.
It’s hard to know why these results come about. Other surveys suggest that men and women are equally likely to volunteer and that people from ethnic minorities or with a disability are under-represented.
So is it something about applying online that increases access? Is that what has also made the difference for younger people? And what’s happening to all the men?
Answers on a postcard, please. (Or you could just post a comment.)
Posted by Tom Green ( 11:36 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]