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Identifying the Causes of NontraditionalCivic Engagement among StudentsRussell K. Mayer a , Wendy Nichols a & David Toth aa Merrimack CollegePublished online: 25 Apr 2012.

To cite this article: Russell K. Mayer , Wendy Nichols & David Toth (2012) Identifying the Causesof Nontraditional Civic Engagement among Students, Journal of Political Science Education, 8:2,120-130, DOI: 10.1080/15512169.2012.667674

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Identifying the Causes of NontraditionalCivic Engagement among Students

RUSSELL K. MAYERWENDY NICHOLSDAVID TOTH

Merrimack College

This study investigates which factors cause college student to express an interest inparticipating in what we classify as nontraditional community service opportunities.The particular form of community service that we examine—participation in a vol-unteer computing project—differs from traditional forms of college student volun-teerism in that it involves no face-to-face contact with others, requires a minimaltime commitment, is a small part of a highly technical enterprise and focuses onthe global rather than the local community. We find that some of the variables thatexplain participation in traditional forms of community service, in particular beliefthat one can make a difference, also explain a penchant for nontraditional partici-pation. We also discover that there are some unique influences on the willingnessof students to do community service in this alternative form. Finally, we explorethe pathways by which the influence of personal characteristics operate in orderto address how and why these factors matter in promoting nontraditional forms ofcommunity service.

Keywords civic engagement, service-learning, technology

Over the last decade, efforts at promoting greater civic engagement among youngpeople, among students in particular, have led to an increased understanding of whatfactors cause them to participate in community-minded volunteer activities. Typi-cally, research on this topic studies students who volunteer or intern with local orga-nizations as part of a service-learning component of their academic experience;although significant variants of this model have also been explored (Campbell2000; Dicklitch 2003; Freyss 2006; Goss, Gastwirth, and Parkash 2010; Hunterand Brisbin 2000; Metz and Youniss 2005; Owen 2000; Walker 2000). In the realworld, however, there are opportunities to participate in ‘‘individual and collectiveactions designed to identify and address issues of public concern’’1 that look nothinglike the conveniently orchestrated opportunities—at times requirements—that wecreate for our students. Little is known about why young people engage in their com-munities in contexts that differ significantly from those to which they have becomeaccustomed in school. It is this question of why students choose to participate in

Address correspondence to Russell K. Mayer, Merrimack College, 315 Turnpike Street,North Andover, MA 01845. E-mail: mayerr@merrimack.edu

Journal of Political Science Education, 8:120–130, 2012Copyright # 2012 Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1551-2169 print=1551-2177 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15512169.2012.667674

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community service, when those activities take a substantially different form, that wetake up in this study.

Part of what motivates the need to understand why young people engage in ser-vice to their communities, for political scientists in particular, is the observation thatover the past several decades successive generations have become increasing cynicalabout and disengaged from the political world (Dalton 2009; Wattenberg 2008).Declining levels of political engagement among youth cohorts over time is a troub-ling indicator of the health of our American democracy, and the jury is still outabout whether reversing this trend is possible. The fact that students are excitedabout volunteering (Dalton 2009; Zukin et al. 2006) but uninterested in politics(Bennett 1997) is regarded by some as a sign that they have chosen nonpolitical overpolitical engagement, essentially abandoning politics in search of a more meaningfulway of connecting with others in their communities. Others maintain that nonpoli-tical community engagement can act as a stepping stone to further promote the kindpolitical participation needed from a democratic citizenry (Putnam 2000). Whetherserving the community is seen as valuable in itself or whether it is regarded as a gate-way to political participation by citizens is in some ways beside the point. If educa-tors are to do our part in preparing America’s undergraduates for lives of moral andcivic responsibility (Colby et al. 2003), we must understand as fully as possible whystudents choose to engage in community service in its various incarnations, regard-less of whether that community service takes an explicitly political form or leads toincreased political awareness.

Volunteerism of a Different Kind

In an effort to extend the scope of our understanding of what motivates youngpeople to get involved in their communities, we investigate a radically different formof volunteerism, namely the student’s willingness to participate in a VolunteerComputing Project (VCP). Volunteer computing is a well-established strategy forsolving large, computationally intensive, mathematical and scientific problems thatuses thousands (or even millions) of personal computers to generate computationalpower equivalent to that of a supercomputer. In volunteer computing, people allowtheir personal computers to work together on a large problem when these computersare not otherwise in use. The owners of the volunteered computers are not compen-sated for the computer power they donate to the project.

Access to high-computational power at a low cost has made volunteer computingan appealing approach for making progress on computationally intensive problems.The VCP strategy is currently being used to solve problems in medicine, science,mathematics, and other disciplines (for example, see Berkeley Open Infrastructurefor Network Computing [BOINC] 2010). However, while the number of volunteercomputing projects has increased from only a couple projects in the 1990s to morethan 35 in 2010, overall participation rates in the general public remain low. In2005, it was estimated that of the 300 million computers connected to the Internet,less than 1% were participating in volunteer computing (Bohannon 2005). Since themost effective way to improve the productivity of volunteer computing is to signifi-cantly increase the number of participants (Toth 2008), researchers have begun toinvestigate which reasons for the low participation rate (e.g., lack of awareness, thecost of electricity, the additional wear and tear on volunteered computers, and fearof theft of personal data or damage to computers, computer illiteracy and the fear

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that volunteering will slow down one’s computer) are having the largest negativeeffects on potential participants (Toth, Mayer, and Nichols 2011).

This need to recruit more individuals to participate in VCPs makes it a useful,real-world test case of a nontraditional form of volunteerism with which to examinethe factors that affect student willingness to engage in their communities. Like themore typical service-learning activities in which students might participate, VCPsare nonpolitical and involve working with others on a voluntary basis to solveimportant societal problems. What distinguishes VCPs in theoretically meaningfulways are that they involve no face-to-face contact with individuals or organizationsin the local community, they require very little commitment of time and resources byparticipants, and they are distinctively global in the community they serve and intheir potential impact. They are also different from more traditional forms of com-munity engagement in that they are likely to be extremely novel to students parti-cipants; that is, most students will never have heard of VCPs before being askedto participate in one, and that the nature of the enterprise is highly technical and spe-cialized (even though the student’s participation does not require any particularexpertise). Because of these distinctive features, we expect that, while some of thestandard explanations for why students choose to volunteer will still apply in thiscontext, understanding why student participation in this nontraditional form ofcommunity service will require considering a somewhat different set of explanatoryvariables.

Standard and Nonstandard Explanations for Volunteering

In terms of the explanations for why students volunteer, we examine three categoriesof variables that have traditionally been used to explain this behavior: attitudestowards civic engagement, prior experience with community service, and politicalactivism. Within our measures of attitudes towards civic engagement, we considerstudent beliefs about the effectiveness of both their personal efforts and the effortsthat they make as part of a group.2 In some ways, participation in a VCP is an indi-vidualistic act done in isolation from others. However, in other ways allowing one’scomputer to be used as part of large network of individuals is a form of group action.Thus, when it comes to this nontraditional form of engagement in the community,we expect that both feeling one’s personal efforts can make a difference and feelingthat working as part of group can help solve societal problems will have positiveeffects on the likelihood of participation.

As for the behavioral variables we consider, we expect that in general priorexperience with community service should positively affect student willingness toparticipate in a VCP. The whole point of getting students involved in their communi-ties while they are in school is to promote a lifelong inclination towards volunteering;service-learning in school begets community service in life, or so the theory goes.Also, high-prior-participation rates are assumed to be an indicator that studentsderive some benefit from these experiences. Otherwise, why would they continueto volunteer at high levels? Thus, high levels of prior experience with community ser-vice should be correlated with a general propensity to serve and a higher likelihoodof participation in a VCP.

Tempering this expectation to some degree is the fact that student experienceswith prior community service cannot be assumed to have all been good ones. As aresult, experience with community service may not have a uniformly positive impact

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on a student’s willingness to do more of it. Furthermore, there are questions aboutthe degree to which experience with traditional forms of community service trans-lates into a propensity for nontraditional participation, essentially of the relevanceof positive prior experiences to this new form of volunteerism. Thus, while on thewhole we believe that prior experience with service should increase the likelihoodof participation in nontraditional community engagement, the strength of thisrelationship may be relatively weak. In addition, we expect that political activism,our other behavioral measures, should not be related to the likelihood of partici-pation in a VCP given the highly nonpolitical nature of this enterprise and themounting evidence that today’s students see politics and community service as dis-connected, or even competing, enterprises.3

In addition to these standard explanations for why students volunteer, we con-sider two factors that should uniquely explain participation in this nontraditionalform of community service: the novelty of the VCP enterprise and the student’s levelof understanding of and comfort with this atypical opportunity to volunteer.Novelty may spark interest, but in general we believe that those students who haveheard of VCPs prior to be asked to participate in one—and are thus familiar withgoals, processes, and requirements of volunteer computing—will be more willingto engage. In addition, a student’s ability to understand the ways in which the com-munity service opportunity functions to serve a society’s goals, as well comprehendtheir part in this enterprise, should positively affect their likelihood of participation.For example, most students are familiar enough with how volunteering at a soupkitchen or tutoring middle school students works, both what is expected of themand how their actions are being of service. Thus, when asked to engage in these tra-ditional community service opportunities, there is little fear of the unknown andsome level of confidence. However, when it comes to VCPs, the same level of com-fort and understanding cannot be assumed. Thus, we expect that a student’s level offamiliarity, experience, and sophistication with computers and technology, what wecall tech savvy, will be positively correlated with his or her likelihood of participationin a VCP.

Methodology

The data used to test these hypotheses regarding the reasons why students partici-pate in nontraditional forms of community service come from an experiment con-ducted in the fall of 2010. Subjects were undergraduates at a small religiouslyaffiliated BA institution located in New England enrolled in introductory coursesin political science (N¼ 148). They were primarily first- and second-year students(86%) and the gender breakdown was 55% male and 45% female. Student subjectswere recruited through a brief presentation in class describing our project as aimedat understanding how people use computers in society, and as a task that would take10–15 minutes of their time, to be completed online at their convenience. Studentswere offered extra credit in their class for participating or the opportunity to usetheir participation in this project as a way of accumulating experiential learningpoints—a course requirement for one of their classes that students could fulfillthrough a variety of class activities.

The main purpose of this research was to examine which persuasive argumentshad the largest affect on willingness to participate in volunteer computing, and soour experimental manipulation involved exposing subjects to one of four scripts

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(i.e., conditions) emphasizing slightly different aspects of volunteer computing. Allconditions contained a basic description of a volunteer computing project that webased on Docking@Home (http://docking.cis.udel.edu/). In two of the conditions,we created two-sided messages designed to combat perceived negative consequencesof participating in this volunteer computing project (e.g., risks of getting a virus,energy costs, and wear and tear on one’s computer). In the other experimental con-dition, we emphasized the positive by providing information on the successes alreadyachieved by this volunteer computing project in solving important societal problems.Subjects in the control condition received none of these arguments and were onlyprovided the basic description of the project.

After reading one of these fours scripts, subjects were asked to rate their likeli-hood of participation in the project described on a 1 to 5 scale, with 1¼ very unlikely,2¼ somewhat unlikely, 3¼ neither likely nor unlikely, 4¼ somewhat likely, and5¼ very likely. Somewhat to our surprise, there were only minimal effects of the mainexperimental manipulation on subjects’ self-reported likelihood of participation;although there were other interesting affects that we have reported on elsewhere(Toth et al., 2011). For our current purposes, however, this lack of difference acrossconditions allows us to pool all 148 subjects without concerns about how the experi-mental manipulation may have affected the measurement of the independent vari-ables of interest in this analysis.

While our dependent variable maintains its natural 1–5 scale in our analysis, werecoded our independent variable to the 0–1 interval to facilitate the comparison ofregression coefficients.4 Attitudes toward civic engagement were measured using twoquestions asking how much difference in solving community problem subjects feltthey individually, and they working as part of group, could make (a great deal, some,a little, or no difference). As measures of their level of prior experience with com-munity service, students were asked to self report on how involved they had beenin community service, both before and during college: not involved at all, a littlebit involved, somewhat involved, or very involved. These two measures weresummed to create an index of prior experience with community service. Our politicalactivism index combined responses to questions about how closely they follow cur-rent events (not at all, a little bit, somewhat, or a great deal), how politically activethey consider themselves, (not politically active, a little bit politically active, some-what politically active, or very politically active), and whether they were registeredto vote or not.

Novelty was measured by simply asking subjects if they had heard of volunteercomputing before reading the description provided in this project.5 Finally, our TechSavvy Index was based on yes=no responses to a battery of 25 questions that variedfrom typical among our students, ‘‘Do you own an iPod=mp3 player?’’ and ‘‘Do youhave a profile on a social networking site (i.e., Facebook)?’’ (95%) to mixed, ‘‘Haveyou ever installed a new piece of hardware on a computer?’’ (50%), to uncommon,‘‘Do you know the difference between EIDE and SATA?’’(5%). Gender and stu-dent’s year in school were also included in our analysis as control variables.

Results

We tested our model of participation in nontraditional community service with anOrdinary Least Squares (OLS) Regression that includes both standard and nonstan-dard variables explaining why students would choose to participate in a community

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service opportunity. The dependent variable for this equation is our subject’s selfreported likelihood of participation in the VCP that we described in our experiment.

The first cluster of variables in Table 1 consists of the standard explanations forwhy students volunteers for community service and includes both attitudinal andbehavioral factors. Student’s beliefs about whether they can make a difference insolving social problems, both individually and as part of a group, are highly posi-tively related to the likelihood of participation in a VCP. Students who think theirpersonal efforts make a great deal of difference fall approximately three quartersof a point (0.738) higher than those who think their personal efforts make no differ-ence on our likelihood of participation scale, an effect that falls just short of the stan-dard (0.05) threshold for statistical significance. The effect of thinking your efforts aspart of a group make a difference are more than twice as large (1.541) and statisti-cally distinguishable from the null hypothesis of no effect with a high degree of con-fidence (p¼ .006). Taken together, these coefficients indicate that one’s personalbeliefs about the efficacy of action directed toward social change at a general levelstrongly affect one’s likelihood of participation in even this atypical form of com-munity service.

Our behavioral predictors, not surprisingly, do not fair nearly as well. We had rea-son to suspect that one’s prior experience with community service might not translateinto a uniformly positive predisposition to participate in VCPs and the near zero coef-ficient (.082) confirms this expectation. Similarly, political activism does not enhanceone’s propensity to participate in this clearly nonpolitical endeavor. We do not makemuch of the negative coefficient on this variable (�.260). Given its relatively small sizecompared to its standard error, it could easily be zero in the population.6

Of our two unique explanatory variables, Tech Savvy fairs very well in itsexplanatory power, while our measure of novelty does not. Moving from the bottomto the top of our Tech Savvy scale increases one’s likelihood of volunteering by morethan a full point on our likelihood of participation scale (1.147). While a change ofthis magnitude just fails to achieve statistical significance (sig.¼ .073), substantivelyit makes a difference. Specifically, being comfortable and familiar with technology

Table 1. Influence of standard and nonstandard factors on likelihood of partici-pation in volunteer computing (OLS regression)

B Std error T Sig.

(Constant) 0.554 0.593 0.935 .352Make Difference Personally 0.738 0.425 1.736 .085Make Difference Group 1.541 0.549 2.805 .006Service Experience 0.082 0.346 0.237 .813Political Activism �0.260 0.375 �0.694 .489Heard of VCP 0.108 0.328 0.328 .743Tech Savvy 1.147 0.633 1.811 .073Gender 0.176 0.187 0.941 .349Year In School 0.359 0.365 0.985 .326

Note. DV¼Likelihood of Participation in Volunteer Computing (1–5); IVs¼All (0–1);Total Sum of Squares¼ 155.88; Regression Sum of Squares¼ 25.06; F¼ 2.993; Sig.¼ .004,N¼ 133. For variables in bold p< .05

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and computers enhances one’s likelihood of participation in VCPs. More generally,we interpret the magnitude and direction of this coefficient as indicating that a stu-dent’s level of understanding of and comfort with the specialized aspects of a com-munity service enterprise positively affects their likelihood of volunteering.

Contrary to our expectation, novelty (or rather familiarity, which is actuallywhat we test here) has no discernible effect on likelihood of participation. The coef-ficient of .108 (sig.¼ .743) indicates that having heard of VCPs beforehand does notmake students more likely to volunteer. Neither gender nor year in school has a sig-nificant effect. As we have noted elsewhere (Toth et al., 2011), we find the lack of aneffect for demographic control variables an encouraging result for those seeking topromote increased participation in VCPs. These results indicate that men andwomen, first-, second-, third-, and fourth-year college students are all relativelyequally willing to participate in such endeavors and so the prospects for increasingparticipation in VCPs are not hindered by demographic biases in their appeal.The overall explanatory power of our equation, F¼ 2.993, sig.¼ .004, is fairly robustand indicates a good fit of the model to the data.

Further investigating the reasons for participation in nontraditional communityservice, Table 2 provides additional information on the three most significant vari-ables in out model: belief that one can personally make a difference, belief thatone can make a difference as part of a group, and tech savvy. The dependent vari-ables for this analysis are two scales that we created measuring our respondent’s ownestimation of the influence of positive and negative considerations in their choice toparticipate in the volunteer computing project that we describe in our experiment.After reading our description and reporting on the likelihood they would participate,respondents were asked:

In thinking about the possible reasons why people might or might notwant to participate in the project, please rate the following factors interms whether they made you more likely, less likely, or had no effecton whether you would be willing to participate.

Respondents considered the influence of two positive considerations—contributingto solving an important societal problem and working with others to accomplish

Table 2. Influence of selected standard and nonstandard factors on the importanceof positive and negative considerations in the decision to participate in volunteercomputing

Importance of positiveconsiderations

Importance of negativeconsiderations

B SE sig. n B SE sig. n

Make Difference Personally 0.178 0.060 .004 140 0.231 0.095 .017 138Make Difference Group 0.184 0.077 .018 141 �0.023 0.123 . 851 139Tech Savvy 0.114 0.095 .231 137 0.229 0.150 . 130 135

Note. Table entries are based on bivariate OLS regressions. All variables are recoded to the0–1 interval.

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something important—and three negative considerations—the costs in terms ofenergy usage and wear and tear on your computer, the danger of possibly of expos-ing your computer to a virus, and the concern that private information about myselfmight become publically accessible. Responses on the self-assessed influences ofthese considerations on one’s decision to participate were combined into two scales.These indices, recoded to the 0–1 interval, show the degree to which respondentsbelieved that positive and negative factors affected their decision to participate.7 A‘‘0’’ on these scales means that the respondent believed these factors (either the posi-tive or negative ones depending on the scale) made them much less likely to partici-pate, while a ‘‘1’’ on these scales indicates they believed that these factors stronglyincreased their likelihood of participation.

As for the hypothesized effect of our three independent variables on these mea-sures of the influence of positive and negative considerations on the decision to par-ticipate, we expected our attitudinal=belief variables to be related to the influence ofpositive considerations only (in a positive direction) and tech savvy to affect theimportance of both positive and negative considerations. Essentially, we believedthat faith in one’s own ability to make a difference, either personally or as part ofgroup, would cue positive considerations but have no effect on negative considera-tions. We expected that believing one can make a difference would make you weighthe potential benefits of VCPs more strongly in one’s decision to participate but haveno effect on negative considerations. We saw no reason for faith in one’s ability tomake a difference to affect one’s estimation of the importance of the risks and cost inthe decision on VCP participation.

On the other hand, we expected tech savvy to have powerful effects on both posi-tive and negative considerations and that the directions associated with these effectsshould be positive overall. We suspected that most tech savvy folks like technologyand computers, are intrigued by their potential and have confidence that VCPs canactually work to solve societal problems. We therefore expected high-tech-savvy indi-viduals to respond that the positive considerations that we present them increased theirlikelihood of VCP participation. As for the influence of negative considerations, whiletech savvy individuals might be more aware of the risk and cost involved in VCP par-ticipation, we expected that they would be more confident that the risks had beenaddressed and that the costs were minimal when participating in reputable VCP effortssuch as the one we described. Thus, we expected that their awareness and understand-ing of computers and technology would make tech savvy individuals more confidentabout the potential benefits of VCPs and more willing to endure the minimal risksand costs involved. Essentially positive and negative considerations should both playa part in leading tech savvy individuals to higher levels of VCP participation.

Table 2 indicates some reasonably robust effects of one’s beliefs about their abil-ity to make a difference and one’s level of tech savvy on the weighing of considera-tions; although not all of these effects are in keeping with our expectations. The firstthing to notice about Table 2 is the nearly uniformly positive effects of these char-acteristics. Believing one can make a difference as part of a group essentially hasno effect on the degree to which negative considerations influence one’s likelihoodof participation in a VCP. However, for all of the other relationships identified inthe table, possessing that trait means that both positive and negative considerationslead to a higher likelihood of participation.

The important comparison for evaluating our hypotheses then is the differencebetween the effects of positive and negative considerations for respondents with

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different characteristics. For those who have a stronger belief in their own ability tomake a difference, both positive and negative considerations lead one to be morelikely to participate. The magnitude of these effects are roughly equally (.178 and.231) and approach statistical significance. Contrary to our expectation, confidencein one’s ability to personally make a difference not only increases the importance ofpositive considerations but also overwhelms negative considerations of risk and cost.Individuals who believe that they can make a difference personally, even when theyconsider the negatives, say that these considerations still make them more likely toparticipate.

In contrast, the effect of believing in one’s ability to make a difference as part ofa group is more in keeping with our expectations. Those with high-group-based effi-cacy report positive consideration make them more likely to participate in VCPs.The size of this effect is .184 on a 0–1 scale, which just fails to meet the .05 levelof significance. However, believing that one’s efforts as part of group can make adifference, as expected, has no effect on the degree to which negative considerationsaffect one’s likelihood of participation.

We suspect that the contrast between beliefs about making a difference person-ally (which enhances both positive and negative consideration) and making a differ-ence as part of group (which just affects the influence of positive considerations) isattributable to the fact the risk and cost of participation in a VCP can all bedescribed as personal ones. Here, personal confidence seems to combat personalrisks. High-personal-confidence individuals discount negative personal considera-tions (risk and costs) and even report that considering these factors still makes themmore likely to participate. We believe that no such two-way effect occurs for beliefsabout group impact because confidence in the group’s ability to have an impact doesnot translate into a hedge against what are basically personally borne risks and costs.

For tech savvy individuals, the discounting of negative considerations seems tobe more powerful that the bolstering of positive considerations. Tech savvy indivi-duals report that considering both the positive and negative aspects of VCPs makesthen more likely to participate, and interestingly the magnitude of the effect of nega-tive considerations (.229) is twice as large as the magnitude of the effect of positiveconsiderations (.114). It seems that, while understanding the ins and outs of comput-ing technology makes individuals somewhat more optimistic about the potential ofVCPs, it powerfully affects their willingness to dismiss the risk and costs of VCP par-ticipation. Both of the coefficients fail to reach the .05 level of statistical significance,but this is mostly due to a lack of variance in our measures in a sample between 130and 141 cases. This size of these coefficients is relatively large given the scale of thedependent variables, especially the effect of tech savvy on the importance of negativeconsiderations.

Conclusion

Clearly, participation in volunteer computing is an alternative form of civic partici-pation or community service. Understanding why individuals would choose to vol-unteer in this way requires nonstandard explanations; although some of thetraditional reasons why individuals are willing to work to solve societal problemsin their communities still apply. In particular, we discovered that the feeling thatone can make a difference, both personally and as part of group, had powerfuleffects on willingness to participate, as did expertise relevant to the particular service

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endeavor. Interestingly, we also found that the pathways through which thesepersonal characteristics influenced the likelihood of participation encompassed forthe most part the consideration of both positive and negative aspects of the volunteeropportunity, with the particular effects of some variables influencing both types ofconsiderations equally and the particular effects of other variables cueing up onetype of consideration more than the other.

At a broader level, our data suggest that there may be two classes of participa-tors in alternative service opportunities of these types. First, there are those who aredrawn to particular aspects of a community service opportunity based on knowledgeof or interest in the specific subject matter. In our example, these are the high-tech-savvy individuals who end up both being convinced of the potential of VCPs to solvesocietal problems and minimizing the relevance of risks and costs. Their perceptionsof the positive and negative aspects of the service endeavor make these experts muchmore likely to participate in such efforts, and we suspect that the current populationof VCP participators is made up largely of such individuals.

The second category is made up of what we consider habitual participators. Theseare individuals who regardless of the opportunity (within reason) are looking for waysto get involved and to make a difference. It is their strong sense of personal and groupefficacy that causes these individuals to be powerfully influenced by the positive poten-tial of community service and to a lesser degree to minimize its negative aspects.

In our opinion, it is these habitual participators that are the great untappedresource in seeking to expand participation in nontraditional community service.As the VCP experience to date illustrates, there are limits to the extent to which alter-native volunteering opportunities can be supported by subject matter experts. There-fore, if we are interested in increasing participation in nontraditional forms ofcommunity service, we need to focus our efforts on building a generation of partici-pators who believe strongly in their own ability to improve society and are able totranslate traditional experiences, gained primarily as students, into nontraditionalopportunities in the real world. Indeed, these ways of doing community service lookdifferent than what they are used to. However, we are confident that extending com-munity service into these new areas, as well as transforming it into different modes ofoperation, holds tremendous potential for our society’s ability to meaningfullyaddress many of the issues facing it.

Notes

1. This widely cited definition of civic engagement is attributed to Michael Delli Carpini,Director, Public Policy, The Pew Charitable Trusts. http://www.apa.org/education/undergrad/civic-engagement.aspx

2. We also collected data on and tested the effect of believing that government was aneffective means for solving societal problems. Our expectation was that this variable wouldnot be related to willingness to participate in VCPs, as they are far removed from the worldof politics. Our expectations were confirmed in the preliminary analysis of these data andso we dropped this explanation from our final presentation of results.

3. In a separate analysis we found that 20% of the subjects in our study considered volun-teering and=or community service activities a form of politics, 32% classified it as a complementto politics, and 48% said either it had nothing to with politics or was an alternative to politics.

4. Exact question wording is available at http://www.merrimack.edu/dtoth/survey_16775956.pdf

5. Only 10% of our subjects claimed to have heard of volunteer computing projects priorto the experiment. We suspect that this estimate is on the high side, as this question was askedduring our posttest and may in fact be a demand characteristic created by the research design.

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6. A large negative coefficient would indicate that students attracted to nontraditionalcommunity service opportunities were those turned off by politics, but the instability of theestimate does not warrant such a bold conclusion based on the small number of cases andthe relatively small magnitude of the coefficient.

7. While these dependent variables were recoded to the 0–1 interval, they maintain thesame number of values, eight for the positive considerations scales and 12 for the negativeconsiderations scales, as the natural versions of the scales.

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