Poster #70 - Essential Elements of the Volunteer Role on Youth Life Skill Development

• In Event: 3-206 - Poster Session 13
  In Poster Session: PS 13 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

Helping youth to develop life skills is the foundational premise of the national 4-H youth development program. The 4-H program offers nonformal educational experiences in community settings covering a variety of subject matter areas (e.g., STEM, health promotion). Appropriately screened and trained adult volunteers provide youth with hands-on educational experiences and help create a supportive environment for learning. The community-based 4-H club is a venerated delivery system that is facilitated and well-supported by adult volunteers. Moreover, tenured volunteers in youth development programs were found to be motivated by affiliation with the organizations they serve (Culp & Schwartz, 1999) as well as the desire to make a difference in young peoples’ lives (White & Arnold, 2003).
In the following study, data were collected from adult 4-H volunteers statewide. A prior study using the same survey examined youths’ perspectives on and interrelationships among 4-H organizational supports and environment, youth self-report of involvement in 4-H activities, their perceived life skill outcomes, and perceptions of their volunteer club leader’s roles in 4-H. Prior results supported a mediational role of volunteer influence (falling into two factors of “mentoring” and club “management”) explaining the influence of organizational supports and youth degree of program involvement, on youth life skill gains. In this study, the volunteer perspective is examined with respect to perceptions of their own roles and life skill gains among youth in their clubs. Exploratory factor analyses indicated volunteers’ perceptions of their role as falling into two factors (belonging and independence), named for Brendtro and colleagues’ (1990) essential elements from an American Indian educational model, which were adapted by 4-H as a foundational framework. Brendtro and colleagues’ (2014) recently stated “belonging,” or an atmosphere in which youth feel safe and supported, is fundamental for producing positive life outcomes, e.g. life skills.
Findings in the current study indicate that “independence,” or the degree to which youth are empowered to make independent decisions and take on challenges with associated responsibilities, has more explanatory power in relation to youth life skill outcomes than belonging. Exploratory factor analysis of life skills from the adult volunteer perspective fell into three factors of: leadership, personal development and communication life skills. Similar to what was found with the study using youth self-report data, the volunteer role – defined as fostering the essential programmatic elements of independence – partly mediated the relationship between volunteers’ level of 4-H program involvement and their perceptions of youth life skill gains. These findings were supported by Sobel tests. The essential element of independence is a potential explanatory variable for the influence of volunteer program involvement on perceived youth life skill gains in 4-H clubs. See Figure 1. for a mediator model with the “personal development life skill” outcome.
Although there is limited research demonstrating the effect volunteer contributions have on youth life skill acquisition in 4-H programs (Zand et al., 2009), the current exploration, through factor analysis and regression to test mediator models, provides potential insight into the process by which 4-H volunteers potentially contribute to youth life skill gains.

Authors

• Kimber Sarver, University of Florida
  Presenting Author

• Kate Fogarty, University of Florida
  Non-Presenting Author