Development and Testing a Volunteer Screening Tool for Assessing Community Health Volunteersʼ Motives at Recruitment and Placement in Western Kenya
Journal Title: Psychology and Cognitive Sciences - Open Journal - Year 2017, Vol 3, Issue 1
Abstract
Introduction: In times of inadequate resources and rising public demand, social service organizations rely on volunteers to meet needs. In the current human resource for health crisis in Africa there is urgent need for community health volunteers (CHVs). Studies have highlighted problems of high attrition rates leading to high replacement training costs among CHVs. There is need for careful selection of volunteers that can serve long-term, once trained. This study was done to develop a volunteer assessment framework for recruitment of CHVs. The framework is based on identification intrinsic motives for volunteering that have been shown to be associated with long volunteer service. Methods: The assessment tool was developed by searching literature for theory based constructs and assessment items associated with volunteering. These constructs and items were synthesized into a proposed assessment framework. The framework was subjected to face content and construct validation in West Kenyan context in phase 1 of the study. The validated framework was tested for ability to differentiate between long serving volunteers and nonvolunteers matched by gender, age and residence. The 2 groups were presented with test items and asked to record their agreement on a scale of 1 to 5 on the reasons why people volunteer. Results: From literature we identified functional, role identity, and social exchange as theories underpinning volunteering. From these theories we identified 8 constructs to include in a proposed volunteer assessment framework. We tested the framework and although all the eight constructs satisfied internal consistency test only 5: altruism, materialism, social adjustment, esteem enhancement and career development were statistically significantly more associated with either volunteers or non-volunteers. Therefore, only these were included on the final volunteer assessment framework, for identification of long serving volunteers in the local context. Conclusion: We propose a volunteer assessment tool with the 5 constructs and 25 assessment items for identification and recruitment of CHVs, with motives consistent with long-term volunteer service. The final framework consists of altruistic (altruism, social adjustment, esteem enhancement) or egoistic (material gain and career development) constructs with 25 assessment statements. The frame work would able to identify individuals with altruistic motives to include and those with egoistic tendencies to exclude during a volunteer recruitment exercise.
Authors and Affiliations
Beverly M. Ochieng
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP543513
- DOI 10.17140/PCSOJ-3-119
- Views 173
- Downloads 0
Psychological Pleasure in Reading and Visual Cognition Under Colour Luminance: A Psycholinguistic Approach
Purpose: To investigate the psychological pleasure of reading and visual cognition under two colour luminance. Methods: A comparative study of sixty participants with emmetropia and no history of ocular pathology was con...
Stendhal Syndrome: A Psychological Response Among Tourists
Stendhal Syndrome (SS) is a behavioral syndrome characterized by anxiety and affective and thought disturbances in response to art and often to culturally or historically significant places. The purpose of this review is...
New Insights into “The Bignetti Model” from Classic and Quantum Mechanics Perspectives
Years ago it was proposed a human cognitive model (TBM) that foresees two compulsory phases (ACTION and COGNITION). The so-called “voluntary” action is decided and executed by an unconscious activity of the mind (ACTION)...
The Symbolism as a Cheap Channel Code: The Symbolic Language’s Role in Cognition
There are different ways in which human beings cognitively handle sources of information. Tasks, such as number guessing, velocity, weight, and extension estimation, can be accomplished through different cognitive strate...
Who are Better at Evaluating Faculty Teaching Peers or Students?
In any Comprehensive Faculty Evaluation System it is important to define the broad range of roles that faculty must play in order to be successful. It is also important to identify the sources of information necessary to...