Passions, People and Appreciation: Making Volunteering Work for Young People 

Table 7 applies multivariate statistical techniques to the results presented in Table 6. It focuses on whether or not 20-year-olds do volunteer work at least once a month – but the results are all else equal. That is, if there is a difference between the level of volunteer work for rural and urban young people, it is not because of differences in socioeconomic background, ethnicity or schooling – it is because of urban-rural differences. The table presents values for logits and the corresponding p values as is customary. The following discussion, however, focuses on the values in the two columns headed "%" because this provides the most direct interpretation of the results. Results are provided for Model 1 and Model 2. The difference between them lies in what is included in the all else equal. In Model 2 all other characteristics listed in the table are held constant. In Model 1, only certain of those characteristics are held constant for any estimate. Further details are provided in Notes to Tables.

• Young women are more likely than are young men to participate in volunteer work at least once per month.
• Young people from the highest fifth of the socioeconomic background profile are more likely to participate in volunteer work at least once per month than are other young people.
• Young people both of whose parents were born in Australia are more likely to participate in volunteer work at least once a month than are other young people. There is no relationship with the frequency with which English is spoken in the home.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth are more likely to do volunteer work at least once a month than are other young people.
• There is no effect of literacy and numeracy on frequency of engagement in volunteer work.
• More outgoing young people are more likely to engage in volunteer work than less outgoing young people.
• Young people who graduate from Year 12 are more likely to do volunteer work at least once a month than are other young people.
• Young people who in 2002 were in full-time study only, part-time work and part-time study, or in part-time study only were more likely to participate in volunteer work at least once a month, while those in full-time work only were least likely to engage in volunteer work at least once a month.