Staff Attitudes Regarding the Service Volunteer: An Exploratory Study of the Attitudes of Social Welfare Staff Towards the Service Volunteer

The authors examined the attitudes of social welfare staff regarding service volunteers, circa 1970. They set out to describe these attitudes in terms of positive and negative trends within a framework of four volunteer areas extracted from the relevant literature (the need for service volunteers in social welfare agencies; the adherence of service volunteers to basic social work principles; the motivation of service volunteers; and the skill of service volunteers). Attitudes were measured by means of an attitude scale administered to thirty-eight professionally trained and twenty-four untrained social workers who were staff members of twelve agencies that serviced the English-speaking community of Montreal. Background variables of type of agency, professional training, length of experience working with volunteers, experience of the volunteer, age of the volunteer, nature of staff contact with the volunteer and staff's perception of the importance of the volunteer program in their agency were investigated to determine if they had any influence upon attitude. The results revealed that the general attitudes were essentially positive, but not extreme. Some aspects of the attitude were negative, but these aspects did not cluster meaningfully into any of the four areas delineated from the literature. The need for service volunteers in agency programs was consistently scored higher than were the motivation, principles and skills of the volunteers. The findings also suggested that professional training, nature of contact with the volunteer, age of the volunteer, length of experience working with volunteers and staff's perception of the importance of the volunteer program in their agency have a degree of influence on attitudes.

Master's Research Report

McGill University

Montreal

1970

vi-78p.

en