The analyses are informed by a commonsense understanding of the ordering of the characteristics of young people. Table 4 presents an outline of this understanding. It does little more than note that a number of characteristics are given. People are born male or female and into families with given socioeconomic and cultural characteristics. While these characteristics may be related, they certainly precede such characteristics as the type of school attended or literacy and numeracy skills.
Although there is some natural ordering of say literary and numeracy achievement and socioeconomic background of the family (socioeconomic background of the family might effect literacy and numeracy, but not vice versa), the ordering of variables in the blocks labelled “School” and “Self-Concept” in Table 4 is more contentious. For simplicity, the model assumes that school sector attended and literacy and numeracy are not ordered, but that self-concept is a consequence of school sector attended and school achievement. This ordering is based on the year in which measurement occurred – the school variables were measured in 1995 and self-concept in 1997, so in this sense at least self-concept is subsequent to school characteristics.
The ordering of the latter variables is more obvious – completion of Year 12 is a consequence of family background, school variables and self-concept. Participation in work and study in 2000 or 2001 is, in turn, the consequence of all the other characteristics. And finally participation in volunteer work is affected by all the preceding variables.
While the analyses in this report focus on how much? and who?, the model informs the question of why?. Answers to the latter question do not address the subjective reasons people may give for participating in volunteer work, but rather questions such as: If young people who attended private schools are more likely to participate in volunteer work than are young people who attended government schools, is this because of their higher socioeconomic background, some other characteristic, or something to do with the school itself?
Tables 7 and 10, which present the multivariate analyses, provide results that address such questions. The section Notes to Tables discusses the nature of these analyses in more detail.