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

Table 10 displays some multivariate results for at least monthly participation in volunteer work by members of the LSAY panel at age 21 in the year 2001. Details of the analyses are presented in the section Notes to Tables. The analyses attempt to isolate the effects of particular variables all else equal. The “all else” differs between Models 1 and 2 as described in the notes. The following discussion focuses on the two columns headed by "%" which can be interpreted directly as “the percentage of young people in the corresponding category who participate in volunteer work at least monthly – all else equal”.

• Young women are more likely to participate at least monthly in volunteer work than are young men. The difference is statistically significant (p<0.05) holding only the background variables (socioeconomic status, etc.) constant, but is smaller and not statistically significant (p>0.05) when all variables are held constant, which suggests that part of the reason young women are more likely to participate in volunteer work is associated with differences in schooling, self-concept or their labour market participation in 2001.
• Young people from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to do community volunteer work at least monthly than are young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. The major difference appears to be for the highest quintile.
• Young people whose parents were both born in Australia are more likely to do at least monthly volunteer work than are other young Australians. The differences are modest – 24.4% for the sons and daughters of the Australian born compared with 20.5% for those whose parents were both born in mainly non-English-speaking countries and 17.9% for those whose parents were both born in other English-speaking countries.
  
  The extent to which English is spoken in the home has no effect on participation in volunteer work, which suggests that the somewhat lower participation of migrant groups has little to do with English language proficiency.
• Although the differences between Indigenous and non-Indigenous youth are relatively large (27.8% and 22.5%, respectively for Model 1 and 29.6% and 22.5% for Model 2) they only border on statistical significance (p<0.05) – because of the small numbers of Indigenous people in the sample. Nevertheless, holding all other (measured) variables constant in Model 2, the slightly larger differences are statistically significant. Indigenous youth are more likely than other young people to do volunteer labour because of their Indigenous background.
• Similarly, young people with a disability were more likely to do volunteer work at least once a month, all else equal.
• Controlling for all other variables, young people from rural areas (28.3%) were more likely to do community volunteer work at least once a month than young people from partly rural areas (24.1%) or urban areas (20.6%).
• The type of school a young person attended at age 15 makes no difference to their likelihood of doing volunteer work.
• Higher levels of literacy and numeracy are associated with higher levels of participation in volunteer labour. The effect is modest and there is little difference among the middle 60% of the population.
• Regardless of family background, schooling, or labour force participation, young people with a more positive self-concept are more likely to regularly undertake volunteer work. The pattern across categories is not perfectly consistent, but certainly the difference between the most positive and least positive quintiles (26.5% and 18.9%, respectively for Model 1 and 26.7% and 18.9% for Model 2) is relatively large in the context of these data. These results point to the efficacy of self-concept in and of itself.
• The number of years of schooling completed does not have a statistically significant (p<0.05) effect on participation in volunteer work.
• Controlling for other characteristics, young people in part-time paid work are more likely to do volunteer work than are young people who do no paid work or young people in full-time work. The differences, however, are modest.