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Student Participation in Community Service Activity / Chapter 3



School Practices to Encourage Participation and Learning

Schools may engage in several activities to encourage students to participate in community service. The most direct action a school may take is to include community service participation as a requirement for graduation; this may be either a policy of an individual school or a rule set by a state for all of its public school students. Schools may also facilitate community service by either arranging or offering service activities, thus making it easier for students to become involved. A survey by Independent Sector (1996a) indicates that 93 percent of teenagers who were asked to volunteer actually did participate, compared with 24 percent of those who were not asked, lending credence to the idea that schools may have substantial influence by simply offering or arranging community service. Still another step schools may take is to incorporate community service into the school curriculum (e.g., by talking about it in class, having students write about it, or allowing the activity to contribute to a class grade), thus increasing the visibility and perhaps the perceived value of community service, as well as possibly offering rewards for service.

The great majority of students (84 percent) said their schools arranged student community service, including 16 percent who said their schools not only arranged it but also required it (figure 2). Almost all of the remaining students (14 percent of the total) reported that their schools neither arranged nor required community service. Very few students (2 percent) were in schools that required community service without also arranging it.

Figure 2.- Percent of students in grades 6 through 12 who reported various school practices to promote community service: 1996

NOTE: Standard errors are as follows: school requires community service, 0.6; school arranges community service, 0.5; school only arranges community service, 0.7; school only requires community service, 0.2; school neither requires nor arranges student community service, 0.5; school requires and arranges student community service, 0.5.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Relationship Between School Policies and Student Participation

Based on the students' description of their schools, the type of policies that schools established appears to be related to student participation. The most important factor appeared to be whether schools arranged or offered community services: 52 to 56 percent of students in such schools said they had participated in community service, compared with 19 to 30 percent of the remaining students (table 7). On the other hand, school policies that required community service did not appear to have as much impact, at least at the time of the survey. The participation rates of students in schools that both arranged and required community service (56 percent) were similar to those in schools that only arranged it (52 percent), while participation at schools that only required service (19 percent) was actually lower than either schools that only arranged it (52 percent) or that neither required nor arranged it (30 percent).

Table 7.-Community service participation of students in grades 6 through 12, by reported school practices to promote student community service: 1996

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                                   School requires                                                      School does not
                                     and arranges      School only requires   School only arranges    require or arrange
       Community service          community service      community service      community service      community service
         participation           -------------------  ---------------------- ----------------------  --------------------
                                  Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Number of students
     (thousands)                   4,242       136         394         53        17,446      177        3,644       124
Community service
participation
  Any participation by
    time of interview/1/            56%        1.9         19%        3.9         52%        0.9         30%        1.7
       Regular                       30        1.6         9          2.3         27         0.7         15         1.3
       1 or 2 times                  27        1.6         10         3.5         25         0.8         14         1.2
  Will participate later
    this school year/2/              32        1.8         61         5.1         29         0.8         37         1.6
  No participation this
    school year                      11        1.0         20         4.7         19         0.6         34         1.8
Plans to participate next
school year
  Yes                                87        1.4         76         5.5         81         0.6         70         1.9
  No                                 13        1.4         24         5.5         19         0.6         30         1.9
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1\ Data were collected from January 2, 1996, through April 13, 1996. Any student who reported participating in at least one activity more than twice is classified as a regular participant. Students may have participated in multiple activities without being classified as regular participants if no individual activity was performed regularly.
2\ Only students who had not done community service by the time of the interview were asked this question.

NOTE: s.e. is standard error. Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Among those relatively few students who were at schools that required community service but did not arrange or offer it, the most common response was that students had not participated yet but they planned to later in the year (61 percent). If all of these students ultimately did participate by the end of the year (which was not certain, since the presence of a requirement did not necessarily mean the requirement had to be fulfilled in that year), the overall participation rate for that year would be better than at schools that neither required nor arranged community service (80 percent versus 66 percent), but no better than at schools that arranged service without requiring it (80 percent versus 81 percent).[7]

At least two hypotheses are available to explain how school policies affect students' participation in community service: school policies might compensate for lower motivation to participate among some students (either by forcing students to participate regardless of their motivation, or by making participation easier so that less work or initiative is required to participate), or schools might help students to overcome other barriers to participation (e.g., the student may not know how to get involved, what opportunities are available, and whom to contact). It is possible for both of these hypotheses to be true, but each might tend to support a different kind of school policy: requiring students to participate might seem most directed at compensating for lower motivation, and arranging community service might seem most directed at removing barriers to participation. Based on this logic, the fact that arranging community service appears more important than requiring it provides some evidence that students are willing to participate but that many students need help in order to participate.

Another way to examine this issue is to compare students across schools in terms of the number of hours that students devote to community service. Since schools that arranged community service generally seemed to be successful in getting additional students to participate, one can ask how those students compared to the students who probably would have participated in any case. If the students who were led to participate by the school policies had less motivation than other participants, one might expect them to participate for fewer hours. If so, schools with such policies might have a different distribution from other schools, with more students concentrated at the low end of the scale. In fact, no such pattern appeared, and the patterns of participation were much the same regardless of the school policies (table 8). For example, the percentage of students who participated for 10 or fewer hours ranged from 23 to 27 percent, and the percentage who participated for more than 80 hours ranged only from 19 to 23 percent. Thus, the school policies seemed primarily to work by lessening barriers to participation for students who were otherwise willing to participate, rather than compensating for lower motivation.

School policies also were related to students' plans for participating in community service in the next year, although the relationship was not as strong as for the same year. Students in schools that both required and arranged community service were more likely to plan to participate in the next year (87 percent) than students in schools that only arranged (without requiring) community service (81 percent), and students at both kinds of schools were more likely to participate than those in schools that neither required nor arranged community service (70 percent)[8].

Table 8.-Hours of regular community service participation in the current school year for students in grades 6 through 12, by reported school practices to promote student community service: 1996

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                                   School requires                                                   School does not
                                     and arranges     School only requires  School only arranges   require or arrange
       Community service          community service     community service     community service     community service
         participation           -------------------  --------------------- --------------------- --------------------
                                  Estimate     s.e.     Estimate     s.e.     Estimate     s.e.     Estimate     s.e.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Number of students
     (thousands)                   1,253        75         34         9        4,755       137        554         47
Hours of community
service since the beginning
of school/1/
  10 or fewer hours                  23%       2.7        (*)        (*)         27%       1.6         25%       3.9
  11 to 30 hours                     28        3.0        (*)        (*)         27        1.4         30        3.4
  31 to 80 hours                     26        3.0        (*)        (*)         26        1.5         25        3.9
  More than 80 hours                 23        2.4        (*)        (*)         20        1.3         19        3.5
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1\ This variable was constructed by summing all reported hours of community service activity during the current school year in which a student had participated by the time of the interview. This question was asked only of those who had participated in at least one activity on a regular basis (26 percent of 6th through 12th grade students). Additional information on this measure is provided in the section on survey methodology at the end of this report, under the heading "hours of service measure."

NOTE: s.e. is standard error. Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding. Because of the small number of cases (un weighted n=14), estimates for students in schools that only require community service are not presented but are designated by (*).
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Types of schools promoting community service

All but 14 percent of students said their schools in some way encouraged community service, with only small differences based on each student's grade level and the school type (table 9). However, there were large differences in terms of the mechanisms that were used to encourage community service - specifically whether schools only arranged community service or they also required it. Students in private schools were much more likely than those in public schools to be in schools that required and arranged community service (40 percent versus 14 percent), and less likely to be in schools that only arranged community service (49 percent versus 70 percent). This was especially true of students in church-related schools. Also, students in grades 9 through 12 were more likely to be in schools that both required and arranged community service (18-21 percent versus 13 percent), and less likely to be in schools that neither required nor arranged community service (11-12 percent versus 18 percent).

Table 9.-Percent of students in grades 6 through 12 who reported school practices to promote student community service, by student's grade and school type: 1996

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                                       School requires
                                         and arranges         School only         School only       School does not
                                           community      requires community  arranges community  require or arrange
                          Number of         service             service             service        community service
   Characteristic         students     -----------------   -----------------   -----------------   ------------------
                         (thousands)    Percent    s.e.     Percent    s.e.     Percent    s.e.     Percent    s.e.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Total                     25,726        16        0.5        2        0.2       68        0.7       14        0.5
Student's grade*
  6-8                       11,535        13        0.7        2        0.3       67        1.0       18        0.8
  9-10                       7,429        21        1.1        2        0.4       65        1.3       12        0.7
  11-12                      6,760        18        1.0        1        0.2       71        1.3       11        0.9
School type
  Public                    23,343        14        0.5        2        0.2       70        0.7       15        0.5
    Assigned                20,010        14        0.6        1        0.2       70        0.8       15        0.5
    Chosen                   3,332        18        1.5        2        0.4       67        1.8       13        1.3
  Private                    2,383        40        2.1        2        0.5       49        2.2       10        1.2
    Church-related           1,851        42        2.3        2        0.6       46        2.4       10        1.5
    Not church-related         533        31        4.0        1        0.5       60        4.3        8        2.1
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*One case was coded ungraded, no equivalent. It was not included in this analysis.

NOTE: s.e. is standard error. Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

The impact of adults as examples

To get a better picture of the relationship between school practices and student community service, a key family characteristic - the involvement of an adult in the household in community service - was controlled for. Fifty-four percent of students reported that their parents or another adult in the household performed community service. The relationship between student reports of school policies and student participation continued to hold regardless of whether an adult in the household provided a positive example of community service, though the overall levels of participation were somewhat lower if no adult participated. For example, among students who said no adult in the household participated in community service, 43 to 47 percent of students participated in community service if they said their school arranged it, compared with 13 to 20 percent of students in other schools (table 10). Similarly, the relationship between school policies and plans for participating in the next year was maintained when no adults participated (with a greater percentage planning to participate if students said the school both required and arranged community service than if students said the school only arranged it, and a greater percentage in both groups planning to participate than if students said the school neither required nor arranged community service).

The lack of an adult participating in community service seemed to most affect the percentage of students who participated regularly. One example is among students at schools that arranged community service; if the students lived in households with a participating adult, 33 to 37 percent participated regularly, compared with only 20 to 21 percent if no adult participated in community service. By contrast, there was not much difference in the percentage who participated one or two times (e.g., 27 percent versus 22 to 26 percent).

A Multivariate Test of the Relationship Between School Policies and Student Participation

Since a number of student, family, and school characteristics were associated with student participation in community service, it is possible that the apparent association between school policies and student participation might change if these factors are accounted for. For example, if parents who participated in community service tended to live in the same types of communities or choose the same types of schools for their children, then the adoption of school policies promoting participation in community service may be an indicator that students were living in family environments that promoted community service, while the school policies themselves may have had no independent impact. To examine this possibility, a multivariate logistic regression that included student, family, and school characteristics was performed (table 11). This test suggests that school policies did have an independent and positive effect on student participation rates, even after statistically adjusting for these other factors. Students who were in schools that arranged community services had a higher probability of participation in community service, while students who were in schools that required community service did not show a statistically significant difference in their participation from other students.[9]

Table 10.-Community service participation of students in grades 6 through 12, by participation in community service of adults in the household and by school practices to promote community service: 1996

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                                    School requires          School only            School only          School does not
         Characteristic              and arranges         requires community     arranges community    require nor arrange
                                   community service           service                service           community service
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                   Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.      Estimate     s.e.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Number of students
    (thousands)                     4,242        136         394        53        17,446       177       3,644        124
No adult participated in
community service
 Number of students
   (thousands)                      1,932        83          225        39         8,032       151       1,752         93
Student community
service participation
  Any participation by
    time of interview/1/              47%        3.1         13%        4.7         43%        1.3         20%        2.0
      Regular                         21         2.0         6.0        2.6         20         1.0         10         1.6
      1 or 2 times                    26         2.5         8.0        4.6         22         1.1         10         1.4
  Will participate later
    this school year2                 37         2.9         59         8.5         33         1.2         34         2.5
  No participation this
    school year                       16         1.9         28         7.8         24          1          46          3
Student plans to participate
next school year
  Yes                                 82         2.6         70         8.2         75         1.1         59         3.1
  No                                  18         2.6         30         8.2         25         1.1         41         3.1
Adult participated in
community service
  Number of students
   (thousands)                      2,310        108        170         34        9,414        187       1,892         90
Student community
service participation
  Any participation by
    time of interview/1/              64         2.4         26         6.1         60         1.3         39         2.3
      Regular                         37         2.3         13         4.4         33         1.1         20         1.9
      1 or 2 times                    27         1.9         14         5.7         27          1          18         1.9
  Will participate later
    this school year/2/               29         2.1         64         6.8         26         1.1         39         2.7
  No participation this
    school year                        7         1.1         10         4.8         14         0.8         22         2.1
Student plans to participate
next school year
  Yes                                 91         1.2         83         7.1         87         0.9         80         2.2
  No                                   9         1.2         17         7.1         13         0.9         20         2.2
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1\ Data were collected from January 2, 1996, through April 13, 1996. Any student who reported participating in at least one activity more than twice is classified as a regular participant. Students may have participated in multiple activities without being classified as regular participants if no individual activity was performed regularly.
2\ Only students who had not done community service by the time of the interview were asked this question.

NOTE: s.e. is standard error. Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Table 11.-Logistic regression analysis to predict student participation in community service

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                                           Coefficient/1/   Standard error    P-value   Odds ratio/2/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Intercept                                      -3.17**           0.157        0.0000        0.04**
Student characteristics
  Female                                        0.13*            0.053        0.0128        1.14*
  English spoken most at home by student       0.45**            0.130        0.0009        1.57**
  Number of types of student activities        0.60**            0.037        0.0000        1.82**
  Student in grades 11 or 12                   0.21**            0.066        0.0025        1.23**
  Student received mostly As                   0.51**            0.078        0.0000        1.67**
  Student received mostly Bs                    0.20*            0.078        0.0113        1.22*
Family characteristics
  Adult performed community service            0.32**            0.066        0.0000        1.38**
  Parent/guardian had college degree or hi     0.25**            0.064        0.0002        1.28**
School characteristics
  Church-related school                        0.58**            0.137        0.0000        1.79**
  Other private school                          0.13             0.228        0.5715         1.14
School policies
  School required service                       0.10             0.091        0.2650         1.11
  School arranged service                      1.00**            0.083        0.0000        2.72**
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
*p<.05. **p<.01.

1\ Each category is expressed relative to an omitted category for the variable, controlling for all other variables in the model. The applicable coefficients can be summed to estimate the probability that students with certain characteristics will participate in community service. For example, for a female student who spoke English the most at home, who participated in three other types of activities, who received mostly As, who had an adult in the household who performed community service, and who fit none of these other criteria, the sum is -3.17 + .13 + .45 +3(.60) + .51 + .32 = .04. Based on these characteristics, the probability of participation is 1/(1 + e ^-.04) = .51, or 51 percent.
2\ The odds ratio can be used to estimate the change in probability of a student participating in community service. An odds ratio greater than 1 indicates that students in the indicated group were more likely to perform community service than the omitted group. More specifically, suppose a student would ordinarily have a probability of participating of 51 percent, but that student is in a school that arranges service. The student's original probability can be expressed as an odds [51/(100-51) = 51/49 = 1.04]. The odds ratio of 2.72 for schools that arrange service can be multiplied by the original odds (2.72 times 1.04 = 2.83) to estimate the revised odds that the student would participate, based on the school's policy. To express the revised odds as a probability, one can apply the formula: probability = (odds)/ (1 + odds) = 2.83/3.83 = .74. Thus, by being in a school that arranges services, the student's probability of participating would increase from 51 percent to 74 percent. The amount of the increase that is associated with the school policy varies from one student to another depending on the student's original probability of participating.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Incorporating Community Service into the Curriculum

A common goal of encouraging community service through school policies is to turn it into a learning experience by providing a chance within the student's curriculum to reflect about the experience - also called service-learning. A majority (56 percent) of students who participated in community service reported that their schools in some way used service-learning methods by incorporating their community service into the curriculum (table 12). Nearly half (45 percent) of those students who participated in community service said they had a chance to talk about their service experience in class or in a group session with other students. Further, 23 percent said their service activity contributed to a class grade, and 17 percent said they were required to write about a service activity in a journal or essay. An estimated 7 percent said the service activity was incorporated in all three ways.

Table 12.-Percent of students in grades 6 through 12 participating in community service who reported incorporation of community service in the curriculum, by school practices to promote student community service: 1996

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                             Number of
                             students                                                                Service activity    Service activity
                           participating     Talked about       Required to       Service activity          was                was
                                in         service activity     write about       contributed to a    incorporated in     incorporated in
     Characteristic          community         in class       service activity       class grade      at least one way    all three ways
                              service       ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
                            (thousands)*     Percent   s.e.    Percent   s.e.       Percent   s.e.     Percent   s.e.      Percent   s.e.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Total                        12,627          45       0.9      17       0.7         23       0.8       56       0.9         7       0.6
School practice
  Requires and arranges
    service                     2,389          50       2.3      32       2.2         35       2.3       67       2.3        14       1.8
  Requires service only          74            32      11.6      40      13.8         44      13.0       57      11.3        17      11.3
  Arranges service only         9,087          47       1.2      14       0.8         22       1.0       56       1.2         6       0.6
  Neither requires nor
     arranges service           1,076          21       2.6       9       1.8          6       1.4       27       2.8         3       1.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------    
*Numbers may not add to totals because of rounding.

NOTE: s.e. is standard error.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, , National Household Education Survey, spring 1996, Youth Civic Involvement component.

Incorporating Community Service into the Curriculum

The incorporation of community service into the curriculum varied depending on other school practices concerning community service. The three strategies that were examined in the questionnaire differed in the degree to which an action was imposed on the student (i.e., the questionnaire did not ask students if they were required to talk about their experience, but only if they had a chance to, while the other two activities were more directive), and the degree to which the student could initiate the activity at his/her own initiative (i.e., a student might have a chance to talk about the experience in class sessions that were not specifically directed towards community service). Thus, it is not surprising that a different pattern appeared for talking about the service activity than for writing about it or incorporating it into a grade. Students were most likely to talk about the service activity in class if their school arranged community service (47-50 percent versus 21-32 percent), regardless of whether the schools required community service. They also were more likely to talk about the service activity than to write about it or have it count toward a grade in a class if the school neither required nor arranged community service, possibly suggesting that some of the students may have been initiating the discussion of community service rather than there being an intentional strategy on the part of the school to introduce a discussion of community service into the curriculum. For the other two activities, however, students were more likely to report school involvement if the schools required service: 32 to 40 percent were required to write about the service activity if service was required (versus 9-14 percent), and 35 to 44 percent said the activity contributed to a class grade (versus 6-22 percent)[10]. It may be that teachers were reluctant or less able to take these more compulsory actions unless they could be sure that students had participated in community service, so that these approaches were more common when community service was specifically required.

Looking at all three curriculum strategies together, students were more likely to report that at least one of the strategies was used if they were in schools that both required and arranged service than if the school only arranged service (67 percent versus 56 percent) or neither arranged nor required service (67 percent versus 27 percent). Finally, students were more likely to have the service activity incorporated into the curriculum in all three ways if they were at schools that required service (14-17 percent versus 3-6 percent).


Footnotes:

[7] Standard errors for the combined estimates are as follows: school only requires community service, 4.7; school does not require or arrange community service, 1.8; school only arranges community service, 0.6

[8] Data are not presented in a table. Standard errors are as follows: planned participation for students in schools that require and arrange community service, 1.4; for students in schools that only arrange community service, 0.6; and for students in schools that neither require nor arrange community service, 1.9.

[9] Some measures that were related to participation when bivariate tests were performed did not show statistically significant results in the logistic regression and were dropped from the model: these were percentage of households in the respondent's ZIP code that were below poverty level and percentage of households that were owner occupied, household income, race, and the number of parents in the household. This does not mean that these factors had no impact on participation, but only that no statistically significant independent effect could be identified. The basic findings did not change when these variables were included, or when alternative forms of the model were also examined (see table 13 for the full logistic regression model). The impact of arranging community service continued to be statistically significant while the impact of requiring community service continued not to be significant if information about school type was removed from the regression, if a separate term was included to measure schools that both required community service and arranged or offered it, and if both actions were taken (i.e., excluding school type and including a separate term for schools that both required and arranged service). Statistical significance depends in part on the number of cases, and a lack of statistical significance does not necessarily mean that the policy had no impact. However, since the magnitude of the coefficient was also small compared to that for arranging community service, it appears that the policy of arranging community service had the greatest impact.
10\ A qualification that should be added is that the number of students in schools that required community service but did not arrange it was so small that this group might be combined with any of the other three groups without much impact. The important point is that these two methods of incorporating the service activity into the curriculum were more common when students were in schools that both required and arranged community service than when the schools did not require community service.


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