Volunteerism and the life course: Investigating age-related agendas for action

Combining a life course perspective with recent theorizing on motivationall y related agendas for social behavior, this study investigated the purposes , expectations, and outcomes of adult hospice volunteers of varying ages. S pecifically, support was found for the hypothesis that younger volunteers t end to be motivated by and to achieve outcomes related to interpersonal rel ationships, whereas older volunteers tend to be motivated to a greater exte nt by service or community obligation concerns. Furthermore, in hierarchica l regression analyses predicting overall satisfaction, benefits relative to costs, commitment, and changes in self-esteem over 6 months of volunteer s ervice, relationship-related variables demonstrated greater and significant predictive power for younger relative to older volunteers. Service-oriente d variables, hypothesized to be more influential in predicting the outcomes of older volunteers, tended to be inconsistently related to these same out comes. Discussion focuses on the theoretical significance of the findings f or contemporary approaches to motivation and research on volunteerism and a ging, as well as the practical implications of the results for volunteer re cruitment, satisfaction, and retention.