Research Analysis: Qualitative & Quantitative

Introduction

For this research project for Save Our Shores, we will be conducting a mixed-method approach evaluating volunteer trends, using both a qualitative focus-group analysis of five or more participants (between 25-35 years old) who have volunteer experience, and a quantitative survey of 20 participants (between 25-60+ years old) who have volunteer experience.

Background: Save Our Shores

Save Our Shores (SOS) is a nonprofit organization in Santa Cruz, California focused on local ocean conservation within the Monterey Bay. SOS is largely a volunteer-based and community-based organization, and it hosts many local events, including beach cleanups, and encourages community stewardship programs. 

SOS holds more than 200 yearly cleanups and recruits around 10,000 citizens to volunteer. The nonprofit can have thousands of volunteers in a single day; for example, the annual Coastal Cleanup Day on Sept. 17, 2022, involved 1,391 volunteers at 65 sites, which resulted in removing 5,800 pounds of debris. (When 1,391 Volunteers Join Forces, n.d.) 

Mission Statement: 

To “foster thriving and sustainable ecosystems in the Monterey Bay and surrounding habitats through equitable environmental action.” 

Situation Analysis

Save Our Shores largely depends on volunteers within the community, especially for the beach cleanups and stewardship programs. This organization could benefit from researching what compels people to volunteer, what prevents people from volunteering, what enables repeat volunteering, and how repeat volunteering affects the way these people engage in their community outside of volunteering. 

Save Our Shores SWOT Analysis

Problem Statement: 

Save Our Shores depends on volunteers to be effective in the Monterey Community. The nonprofit needs to conduct research on how to gain more volunteers and repeat volunteers.

Goal Statement: 

The goal of this research is to discover what motivates people to start volunteering, what prevents them from volunteering more, what inspires them to volunteer with an organization again, and if that volunteer work affects their community engagement outside of volunteering.

Research Objectives

The research uses a mixed-method approach, including both quantitative and qualitative research. The objective of conducting first a focus group and then a survey questionnaire is to first determine key themes in these questions through qualitative research, then to use that data to craft a questionnaire to obtain more quantitative data with people who volunteer.

Qualitative Research: Focus Group

Objectives of the Focus Group: 

The objectives of the focus group are to talk with participants who have volunteer experience to learn: How often they volunteer; How many organizations they volunteer with; What type of organizations they volunteer with; The likelihood of them volunteering regularly with an organization; How that volunteer work makes them feel while doing it; How volunteering makes them feel outside of volunteering (within their community); If they think the frequency of volunteering impacts their engagement with their community in similar ways.

Focus Group Details

Participants & Setting: 

The participants of this focus group include five adults between the ages of 25-35 who live in Santa Cruz county, California, and who have volunteer experience. The setting for the focus group is in a casual setting, sitting in a circle around a table. 

Procedure: 

The procedure for this focus group would be to use an interview guide of pre-planned questions (including an ice breaker) in a semi-structured interview style but allowing the questions to guide the conversation among participants in a free-flowing way (but making sure each participant contributes to the discussion and within a set timeframe before moving on to the next question). 

Before beginning the group interview, a quick questionnaire will be distributed to get basic participant volunteer information. It will also contain a consent form. Then the facilitator will issue the welcome statement and introductions, then explain the purpose of the focus group and the ground rules.

Focus Group Intro & Questions

Facilitator:

Welcome, hand out the intro survey, and explain the ground rules.

Engagement Questions / Ice Breaker

Each person quickly says the answers to their intro survey:

1. What is some basic information about your volunteer experience?

Exploration Questions: 

1. What inspired you to start volunteering?
2. What type of activities do you do while volunteering?
3. If you’ve volunteered multiple times with the same organization, why do you return beyond the first volunteer experience?
4. How do you feel when you’re volunteering?
5. How do you feel in the weeks after volunteering?
6. In what way does volunteering affect your engagement within your community?
7. Do you have any ideas about how a volunteer organization could improve volunteers’ engagement within their communities?

Exit Question:

Prompts:

Some prompts that could be helpful during the focus group include:

“Can you tell us more about that?” ƒ 

“Help me understand what you mean.” ƒ 

“Can you give an example?”

Means of Recording Answers: 

Recording app on a laptop.

Avoiding Researcher Bias: 

To avoid researcher bias, the simple, clear questions will be written and communicated in a direct manner with the intention of not leading the participants to a certain response. 

Focus Group Conclusions

The focus group included topics, such as the participants’ volunteer experience, their repeat volunteer experience, and if their volunteering impacts how they act in their personal lives. During the focus group, two additional areas of interest emerged: when participants started volunteering and what holds the participants back from volunteering more. 

The conclusions from this first focus group support the need for additional research, specifically focusing on the age range of participants who can volunteer regularly, the reasons or motivations behind initiating volunteer work, as well as the connection between taking volunteer work experiences and bringing that effort into the volunteers’ communities outside of the volunteer time. Of particular interest is the reason for volunteering in relation to the age range.

Survey Questionnaire

Objectives of the Survey

The objectives of the questionnaire survey is to see: when participants participated in volunteering during their lives, including when they started volunteering; what inspired them to start volunteering; if participants would want to volunteer with one organization or many different ones; and what prevents people from volunteering more.

Participants

The participants of the questionnaire survey included 20 individuals with volunteer experience who are at least 25 years or older. Among the participants, 40% were 60< years, 25% were between 40-60 years old, and 35% were between 25-40 years old.

Procedures

The questionnaire survey was conducted using Google Forms and distributed to participants via text message. Participants could also forward the survey to other qualifying individuals. The questionnaire used closed answer questions but included “not applicable” and “other” options when appropriate. All questions were mandatory.

Items on the Survey & Prompts

“Thank you for participating in this questionnaire. The goal is to gain insight into why people start volunteering, when they start volunteering, and what hinders them from volunteering more.

Volunteering: the act of giving time, effort and talent to a need or cause without profiting monetarily; this includes mandatory volunteering and unpaid internships/skill-development work.

This survey will take about three minutes of your time! Thank you!

Email: _______________

What is your name?  ________________

What is your age? (Select one) (Appendix, chart 1)

• Younger than 12 years old
• Between 12 and 18 years old
• Between 18 and 25 years old
• Between 25 and 40 years old
• Between 40 and 60 years old
• Over 60 years old

When did you start volunteering? (Select one) (Appendix, chart 2)

• Younger than 12 years old
• Between 12 and 18 years old
• Between 18 and 25 years old
• Between 25 and 40 years old
• Between 40 and 60 years old
• Over 60 years old

What inspired you to start volunteering? (Select one) (Appendix, chart 3)

• Family/friend influence
• Church activities
• Mandatory volunteering
• Skill-development
• Personal interest
• Other _______

What type of activities did you do for volunteer work? (Select all that apply) (Appendix, chart 4)

• Food-service volunteering
• Environmental volunteering
• Animal volunteering 
• Social-impact volunteering
• Healthcare volunteering
• Professional volunteering
• Other _________

Please indicate your volunteering experience time by age range. (Appendix, chart 5)

Do you want to volunteer more than you currently do? (Appendix, chart 6)

Yes / No

What prevents you from volunteering more? (Select all that apply) (Appendix, chart 7)

• Not enough time
• Not enough energy
• Not enough money
• Volunteer schedules too inflexible
• I don’t want to
• Other _______

Would you rather: (Select one) (Appendix, chart 8)

• Volunteer with many different organizations
• Find one volunteer organization to volunteer regularly with
• Neither

Does volunteering inspire you to act differently now in your personal life/in your community?

(Scale 1 to 5, 1 being “strongly agree” and 5 being “strongly disagree”) (Appendix, chart 9)

1     2     3     4     5

What is the biggest benefit you get from volunteering? (Select all that apply) (Appendix chart 10)

• Sense of community
• Sense of purpose
• Gaining new skills
• Fun
• Other: _______

Thank you for completing the survey!”

(End of survey)

Means of Recording Answers

The answers to the questionnaire were recorded with Google Forms. 

Avoiding Researcher Bias: 

The questionnaire used simple, clear questions written in a direct manner with the intention of not leading the participants to a certain response. “Other” and “NA” options were available when appropriate for most questions. Certain questions were also “select all” options. Particular attention was paid to the order of response options.

Analytical Methods: 

Because the questionnaire used a closed-answer question model, the results will be analyzed according to the percentages of responses. For “other” options, the answers will be analyzed to make sure the response is “other” or fits into a category. (Ex: “other” responses from “what type of volunteer activity” included some that would fit into some of the provided options.)

Questionnaire Conclusions

• 50% of respondents started volunteering when they were 12-18 years old; 60% started volunteering >18 years. Only 10% of respondents started volunteering at 40+.
• The most common inspiration for volunteering was “family/friend influence” (40%), then “personal interest” (35%). No participant selected “other” or “social media / news” – considering the majority (60%) of participants started volunteering when they were >18 years, social media was not as strong of an influence. If another survey/questionnaire were conducted focused on the >18 age range, perhaps the results would be different.
• In the type of activities the participants do/have done for volunteer work, some participants answered “other” when the answer would have fit a category. This question might need to be clarified further for applicants if used again in the future.
• With volunteer experience time by age range, one-off volunteering dropped off significantly in the 40-60+ age ranges but peaked in the 25-40 age range. In the >12-18 age ranges, one-off, short-period and 1-4x volunteering experiences were the highest.
• Half of respondents want to volunteer more than they currently do. 
• The biggest hindrance to volunteering more was not having enough time (85%). Only 5% said that they didn’t want to, which indicated that some of the 50% in the above question might want to volunteer more if conditions changed (time, energy, etc.).
• Three-quarters of respondents said they would prefer to volunteer with the same organization regularly.
• 65% of respondents agreed that volunteering inspires them to act differently now in their personal lives/in their community. Only 25% disagreed, though 20% strongly disagreed.
• 90% of respondents gain a sense of community from volunteering, followed by 80% gaining a sense of community. 65% said they had fun, and 45% gained new skills.

Suggested Next Research Steps

Considering that a large number of participants started volunteering when younger than 18 years old, and that none of the research conducted included people of that age range, it would be beneficial to conduct a focus group and subsequent questionnaire focused on volunteers >18 years to understand their motivation to volunteer and to consider the generational differences in answers.

Appendix

Chart 1

Chart 2

Chart 3

Chart 4*

*Note: the table below does not reflect the above data because “other” answers that fit into a category were added in the above numbers.

Chart 5

Chart 6

Chart 7

Chart 8

Chart 9

Chart 10 

Sources

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‌Dzija, J., Foster, J., Hernandez, S., Nardi, S., Theriault, P., & Wynne, C. (2005). How to Conduct Effective Focus Groups and Surveys. Adult Education Strategic Plan.

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Kelley, K., Clark, B., Brown, V., & Sitzia, J. (2003). Good Practice in the Conduct and Reporting of Survey Research. International Journal for Quality in Health Care, 15(3), 261–266. OUP. https://academic.oup.com/intqhc/article/15/3/261/1856193

Survey Design Software : Design A Successful Survey System. (2014). Surveysystem.com. https://www.surveysystem.com/sdesign.htm

About. (n.d.). Save Our Shores. https://saveourshores.org/about/

When 1,391 Volunteers Join Forces. (2022). Save Our Shores. Retrieved January 16, 2023, from https://saveourshores.org/when-1391-volunteers-join-forces/