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The information below is a supplement to the second issue of the Investigator series.
Volunteering rates by state differ if you exclude volunteering through a religious organization. This may be important because religious organizations have different characteristics than other types of volunteer organizations. The figure below shows if a state moves up or down in the volunteer rate ranking when religious volunteering is excluded. States on the diagonal line do not change rankings. For example, Virginia has the same ranking whether or not you exclude religious volunteering. On the other hand, Alabama and New Hampshire move further down and up in the rankings, respectively.
Volunteering is episodic. The graph below shows the number of hours volunteers annual spend volunteering. The majority of volunteer's give less than 100 hours a year, or about 2 hours a week. Few volunteers give more than 8 hours a week.
Most volunteers give less than 50 hours a year, which is less than 1 hour a week. The table below shows volunteer hours if they are less than 500 hours a year. Notice that the scale is different than the previous table.
Age is a determinate of volunteering rates. The below figure suggests that middle-aged persons have the highest volunteering rates among age groups.
Voting and volunteering are positively correlated. The table below lists the volunteer rate and voting rate among volunteers for 2002. Note that the voting rate is conditional on volunteer status. From these statistics only, however, it is incorrect to say that volunteering causes voting because correlation does not imply causation.
| Volunteering and Voting Rates, 2002 | ||
| State | Volunteering Rate | Voting Rate of Volunteers |
| AK | 38.60 | 77.52 |
| AL | 30.72 | 66.92 |
| AR | 32.18 | 70.65 |
| AZ | 25.67 | 59.28 |
| CA | 26.47 | 62.56 |
| CO | 34.46 | 73.49 |
| CT | 32.55 | 67.97 |
| DC | 28.00 | 71.97 |
| DE | 29.64 | 61.50 |
| FL | 24.07 | 69.25 |
| GA | 24.24 | 64.63 |
| HI | 27.42 | 73.65 |
| IA | 43.11 | 71.08 |
| ID | 36.95 | 67.43 |
| IL | 29.56 | 65.97 |
| IN | 29.88 | 60.46 |
| KS | 38.59 | 68.91 |
| KY | 31.87 | 70.83 |
| LA | 22.29 | 72.26 |
| MA | 25.94 | 71.81 |
| MD | 34.78 | 73.48 |
| ME | 34.94 | 74.31 |
| MI | 33.77 | 74.23 |
| MN | 39.62 | 83.65 |
| MO | 30.64 | 72.22 |
| MS | 25.19 | 63.51 |
| MT | 40.37 | 71.60 |
| NC | 27.50 | 72.73 |
| ND | 35.07 | 79.87 |
| NE | 42.05 | 65.33 |
| NH | 30.10 | 68.68 |
| NJ | 27.56 | 62.61 |
| NM | 28.66 | 63.40 |
| NV | 22.85 | 70.43 |
| NY | 22.11 | 62.05 |
| OH | 31.71 | 68.98 |
| OK | 29.39 | 73.64 |
| OR | 32.56 | 71.04 |
| PA | 31.84 | 61.04 |
| RI | 22.99 | 73.30 |
| SC | 31.92 | 66.33 |
| SD | 41.07 | 87.95 |
| TN | 23.42 | 75.17 |
| TX | 29.51 | 60.25 |
| UT | 52.68 | 66.08 |
| VA | 31.36 | 55.29 |
| VT | 34.03 | 73.36 |
| WA | 34.50 | 75.39 |
| WI | 36.27 | 71.15 | WV | 27.11 | 61.69 |
| WY | 38.17 | 70.51 |
| Source: 2002 Current Population Surveys | ||
Political Persuasion
Volunteerism is more common in states with a high percentage of Republicans to other political party (see figure below). Though work without compensation for a political party or advocacy group is defined as volunteering, this does not drive the result. In fact, there is little or no relationship between volunteering for a political group and one's own political persuasion.
On average Republicans are wealthier than Democrats. Since volunteerism is positively correlation with wealth, perhaps the "Republican" effect is actually an income effect. Additional analysis is required to ferret out these nuances.
For more information on the relationship between voting and volunteering see also, "2002 Youth Survey on Political Attitudes, Party Loyalties: Key Findings on the Importance of Political Party Identification and Religious Involvement", Center for Democracy and Citizenship http://www.youngcitizensurvey.org/religion.htm (Accessed June 21, 2004).
Expenditure on Public Services
Many social services need both donations of money and time in order to operate. These organizations combine inputs of time and money to produce social services. In the production these services, organizations may be able to substitute donations of money for donations of time. For example, a donation of money may allow an organization to purchase a fax machine and replace their volunteer "runner". On the other hand, more money may allow an organization to manage more volunteers. The empirical question is, if government funding or other funding of social services increases, does the volunteering rate also increase?
Volunteering rates increase as per capita state expenditures on public services increase (see figure below). State expenditures on public services are defined as the sum of public welfare, hospitals, health care, natural resources, and parks and recreation expenditures. This may suggest that volunteers and governments are complimentary inputs - the more you have of one, the more you need of the other.
Activities
Volunteer activities differ by state (see table below). Consider three types of volunteer work, activities i) to protect the environment or animals, ii) to support emergency preparedness or relief, and iii) to support public health or safety. The states with the highest level of volunteering in these three areas are Washington, Utah, and Arkansas respectively.
Environmental activity rates increase gradually among the top five states. In emergency activities, however, a three percentage point gap exists between the second and third ranked states, Idaho and Arkansas. Why do volunteers in Utah and Idaho participate at such higher rates in emergency preparedness activities? Similarly, a five percentage gap exists in public health between the highest state, Arkansas, and the second highest state, Wyoming.
| Percentage of Volunteer Activities by State | |||||
| Environmental | Emergency | Public Health | |||
| WA | 8.19 | UT | 13.87 | AK | 17.57 |
| NJ | 7.93 | ID | 13.77 | WY | 13.23 |
| ME | 7.69 | AK | 10.85 | VA | 12.61 |
| AK | 7.59 | AZ | 9.35 | ID | 12.5 |
| WY | 7.39 | WY | 8.75 | UT | 11.12 |
| Source: 2002 Current Population Survey, September Supplement | |||||
Volunteer Service Centers
Information by state is available on the number of volunteer service centers under the Points of Light umbrella. The figure below plots a relationship between volunteer service centers and state volunteering rates. The figure suggests that as the number of service centers increases the state volunteering rates also increase. However, this does not imply causation because correlation does not imply causation.
The decision to fall under the Points of Light umbrella is not random. It may be that successful volunteer centers chose to work with the Points of Light organization. Thus high volunteering rate are correlated with Points of Lights centers, because of a center's choice and not because of the services of Points. On the contrary, it may be that centers elicit more volunteering from neighboring communities because of the support of the Points of Lights.
To answer this question, more information is needed on the characteristics of the center, how they joined the Points of Light Foundation, and the characteristics of the state or locale.
The Investigator series hopes to encourage your curiosity. There is no limit to the questions you can ask or the analysis than can be performed on this and other data sets in the field of volunteerism.
Review of Statistics: Mean, Median, and Mode
The three statistics mode, median, and mean have an easy and quick interpretation. If the values of the mode, median, and mean are in order, from least to greatest, then the distribution is skewed right.
mode < median < mean => skewed right
A skewed right distribution is one in which the tail of the distribution is on the right and the mass of observations is on the left.
For example, consider the mode, median, and mean of Neighborhood Watch Programs by state. The mode is 30, the median is 120, and the mean is 433. The distribution is skewed right.
The values on the far right "pull up" the mean. It is because there are values away from the clump of data to the left that the mean is large and that the distribution is skewed towards the right. The states with large values are Florida (3302), California (3092), and Kentucky (3090). The next largest state is Nebraska (1512). It is because of the Florida, California, and Kentucky that the mean is so large. In fact, 44 states have less than 900 Neighborhood Watch Programs.
The median is the middle observation. To find this number, write down all of the states and their number of Neighborhood Watch Programs. Do this so that they are in order, from least to greatest. The value of the Neighborhood Watch Program in the middle is the median observation. In our case, it is Colorado with 120 Neighborhood Watch Programs.
The mode is the "hump" in the data, or the most frequent observation. The graph below is the same as the graph above, except that each bin contains only one value. We can see that there are 3 states with the same value. From closer inspection we know that the value is 30 Neighborhood Watch Programs.
As may be seen from the table, all of these programs are skewed right.
States have relatively few Medical Reserve Corps Programs compared to other programs, but this distribution is also skewed right.
As seen above and from the table, the maximum values are not too large compared with a typical observation. Thus, the mean value is not too far away from the median and the mode.
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