Continuity and change in volunteering through times of economic prosperity and adversity: a mixed-methods longitudinal secondary analysis.

志愿者在英国社会中的作用受到了极大的重视。联合政府的政策设想，通过社区倡议，依靠自愿努力，可以满足更多的需求。政府的“大社会”政策体现了这一理念；大社会可以被认为是一个倡议和立法的框架，比如2011年的《地方主义法案》，它将赋予邻里团体代表社区采取行动的新权利和权力。假设个人有能力和意愿代表他们的社区做志愿者，提供社区需要的东西。志愿者被认为是英国社会的重要成员。大多数英国成年人都从事某种自愿的无偿工作，无论是非正式的活动，比如为社区内的家庭和非家庭成员提供帮助，还是更正式的活动，比如为一个组织提供定期帮助，为某个特定问题开展活动；或者在政治上活跃。如今，我们从调查等统计资料中对英国的志愿活动有了很多了解，但这些资料通常只提供特定地点志愿活动的静态图片。我们不太了解人们对志愿服务的态度和志愿服务行为是如何随着时间的推移而持续或改变的，也不太了解这些趋势与更广泛的社会经济变化之间的关系。我们的项目将着眼于1981年至2012年间的志愿服务，这段时间包括经济衰退和公共服务削减的时期，直到20世纪90年代中期，随后是90年代中期至2008年的相对繁荣时期，然后是当前的低迷时期。我们将寻找在这些不同时期志愿活动的变化和连续性，探索个人志愿活动的动机是如何随着时间的推移而变化的。随着时间的推移，志愿者的社会经济特征是否发生了变化？志愿者如何平衡有偿和无偿工作？如果需要，今天的志愿者是否觉得自己还有能力去做志愿者？对于谁应该满足公共需求——国家、地方社区还是个人，个人持有什么观点？随着时间的推移，这些是如何变化的？这些问题的答案需要基于长期跟踪个人的纵向数据。理想情况下，我们需要提供能够代表总体的估计，以及对个人观点的详细见解。为了满足这些需求，我们提出了一种创新的混合方法。我们将研究大众观察项目（Mass Observation Project）的数据，在这个项目中，人们可以自由地撰写关于自愿无偿工作、福利、志愿服务和国家等主题的文章。这提供了丰富的纵向信息，使我们能够深入了解人们如何以及为什么改变或继续特定的观点和志愿行为。我们将用纵向调查数据集补充这些定性数据。分析将包括小组数据，对有代表性的人群样本提出同样的问题，跟踪他们多年，以及重复的横断面调查数据，询问人们对福利提供的感受，以及政府在特定时间点满足特定社会需求的作用。这些人口水平的定量数据使我们对志愿服务的变化和连续性有了很好的了解。这种定性写作和调查数据的重用和结合代表了一种看待志愿服务的新方式。它还代表了一种思考我们如何使用数据的新方式，可能对社会学、社会政策或当代英国社会史领域的其他人有价值。本研究通过促进对志愿服务的学术和非学术理解产生影响，通过结合纵向定性和定量数据进一步了解与方法方法有关的知识，并为围绕当代政策干预的辩论提供信息

Much emphasis is being placed on the role of the volunteer in British society. The Coalition government's policies envisage that more needs can be met through community initiative, relying on voluntary effort. The Government's 'Big Society' policies give expression to this idea; the Big Society can be thought of as a framework of initiatives and legislation, such as the 2011 Localism Act, that will give neighbourhood groups new rights and powers to act on behalf of their community. The assumption is that individuals have the capacities and willingness to volunteer on behalf of their communities to provide the things the community needs. The volunteer is talked of as a vital member of British society.Most British adults undertake some sort of voluntary unpaid work, whether this be informal activity such as providing help to family and non-family members within their community, or more formal activity such as providing regular help to an organisation, campaigning about a particular issue; or being politically active. We know a lot about volunteering in Britain today from statistical sources such as surveys, but these often provide static pictures of volunteering at specific points. We know little about how attitudes to volunteering, and volunteering behaviours, have continued or changed over time, or about how those trends relate to wider socioeconomic changes. Our project will look at volunteering between 1981-2012, a timeframe which includes a period of recession and public service cuts until the mid-1990s, followed by a period of relative prosperity in the mid-1990s-2008, and then by the current downturn. We will look for changes and continuities in volunteering during these different periods, exploring how individuals' motivations to volunteer have changed over time. Have there been changes in the socio-economic characteristics of volunteers over time? How have volunteers balanced paid and unpaid work? Do today's volunteers feel that they have further capacity to volunteer, if required to do so? What views have individuals held, on who should meet public need - the state, the local community, or the individual? How have these changed over time? Answers to these questions need to be based on longitudinal data that follow individuals over time. Ideally we need to provide estimates that are representative of the population as well as detailed insights into individuals' views. To meet these needs, we are proposing an innovative mixed-methods approach. We will examine data from the Mass Observation Project, where people freely write on topics such as voluntary unpaid work, welfare, volunteering and the state. This gives rich longitudinal information that provide us with insight into how and why people change or continue with particular view points and volunteering behaviours. We will complement this qualitative data with longitudinal survey data sets. The analysis will include panel data that ask the same questions about volunteering of a representative sample of people, following them over a number of years, and repeated cross-sectional survey data that ask questions about how people feel about provision of welfare benefits, and the role of the government in meeting particular social needs at a particular point in time. These population-level quantitative data give us a good understanding of change and continuity in volunteering. This reuse and bringing together of qualitative writing and survey data represents a new way of looking at volunteering. It also represents a new way of thinking about how we use data, and may be of value to others researching in the field of sociology, social policy or contemporary British social history.This study generates impact by contributing to academic and non-academic understanding of volunteering, furthers knowledge in relation to methodological approaches by combining longitudinal qualitative and quantitative data, and informs debates around contemporary policy interventions