Measurement of feelings of obligation to volunteer: the Obligation to Volunteer as Commitment (OVC) and Obligation to Volunteer as Duty (OVD) scales

Abstract

While definitions of volunteering centre on the concepts of freedom and choice, in practice volunteering can be imbued with aspects of obligation. This paper describes the development of measures of feelings of obligation to volunteer. As a foundation for scale development, a literature review of feelings of obligation to volunteer suggested two dimensions of obligation: commitment, related to the devotion of volunteers who engage in serious leisure and the rewards that result, and including sub-dimensions of reward, affective attachment, flexibility and side bets; and duty, related to volunteers’ feelings of being burdened by their volunteer pursuits, comprised of the sub-dimensions of expectation, burden and constraint. These two distinct dimensions of obligation to volunteer evolved as two measures in a scale-development process that included review of potential items by subject experts and volunteers, exploratory factor analyses of potential items using data from a student sample and validation of the scale with a volunteer sample.

Keywords:

• Volunteering
• obligation
• scale development
• commitment
• duty
• serious leisure