Health Benefits of Volunteering in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study

Author:

Piliavin Jane Allyn1,Siegl Erica2

Affiliation:

1. Jane Allyn Piliavin is Conway-Bascom Professor Emerita and former Chair of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She is coauthor, with J. Dovidio, L. Penner, and D. Schroeder, of The Social Psychology of Prosocial Behavior (2006) and, with P. Callero, of Giving Blood: The Development of an Altruistic Identity (1991). She studied emergency intervention, blood donation, and volunteering before turning to the health effects of community participation.

2. Erica Siegl is a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She is a social psychologist with research interests in self and identity, social factors impacting health, environmental sociology, and the scholarship of teaching and learning.

Abstract

We investigate positive effects of volunteering on psychological well-being and self-reported health using all four waves of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study. Confirming previous research, volunteering was positively related to both outcome variables. Both consistency of volunteering over time and diversity of participation are significantly related to well-being and self-reported health. The relationship of volunteering to psychological well-being was moderated by level of social integration, such that those who were less well integrated benefited the most. Mattering appears to mediate the link between volunteering and well-being. Controls for other forms of social participation and for the predictors of volunteering are employed in analyses of well-being in 1992. We find volunteering effects on psychological well-being in 2004, controlling for 1992 well-being, thus providing strong evidence for a causal effect.

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Subject

Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,Social Psychology

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