Volunteering and Educational Success Among Adolescents With Disabilities: A Longitudinal Analysis

• In Event: 49.042 - Pathways to Success for Students With Disabilities?

Abstract

Previous literature has demonstrated that volunteering and other forms of civic engagement are positively related to academic achievement, high school completion, and postsecondary enrollment. However, less is known about participation among students with disabilities, or if participation provides a similar educational advantage for this population as it does for their peers. Volunteering and civic engagement are posited to contribute to educational achievement and attainment by increasing students’ human and social capital. As students with disabilities typically accumulate fewer of these resources than students without disabilities, volunteering may be doubly beneficial.

This project uses three waves of the public-use Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to examine the relationship between having a disability in adolescence, volunteering in adolescence, and high school completion and college enrollment. Volunteer data is available in all three waves and includes information both on the intensity and type of participation. I first examine differences in volunteer participation between students with or without disabilities. Next, I consider if participation associates with high school completion and college enrollment for students with disabilities by exploring a series of interactions.

Results indicate that students with disabilities are less likely to report volunteering than students without disabilities across all survey waves. However, they volunteer more frequently when they do volunteer and are involved in qualitatively different types of organizations. Logistic regression analyses indicate that volunteering is positively associated with high school completion and college enrollment for students with disabilities. While the marginal effect of volunteering on these measures of educational success is smaller for those with disabilities than those without, students with disabilities who volunteer are significantly more likely than students with disabilities who do not volunteer to complete high school or enroll in college, net of sociodemographic characteristics. Future analyses will expand upon these results to 1) examine this relationship among different types of disabling conditions, 2) predict GPA and explore potential mechanisms of self-efficacy and prosocial attitudes, and 3) consider if the education effect remains in a propensity score matched sample.

These results contribute to our understanding of pathways to success for students with disabilities by identifying an alternate mechanism – volunteering – through which students might accumulate human and social capital. They also underscore the need to develop volunteer programs that are more inclusive for students with disabilities, both as an end goal and as part of a broader developmental process. Volunteering is also positively associated with physical health, mental health, employment, and higher pay; increasing volunteer participation among students with disabilities may be one strategy for facilitating more successful overall transitions to adulthood.

Author

• Carrie Shandra, Stony Brook University - SUNY