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The effects of required community service on the process of developing responsibility in suburban youth
Abstract
The purpose in this study was to describe how required community service affected adolescent attitudes toward being personally and socially responsible and to identify the program variables and practices that are most effective in facilitating student development. Two sections of the Experiential Educational Questionnaire, which was developed by Conrad and Hedin at the Center for Youth Development and Research of the University of Minnesota, were used in the current study. Student attitudes toward being socially and personally responsible were measured by the Social and Personal Responsibility Scale (SPRS). The relative importance of various aspects of the students' community service was measured by the Characteristics of a Community Experience Checklist Scale. The findings of the study indicated: (1) There is no difference in attitudes towards social and personal responsibility between students who participated in the required 10 hours of community experiential program and those students who did not participate as measured by their total SPRS scores. (2) Students who were involved in the required community service programs for more than 10 hours, regardless of the type of service rendered, demonstrated significant gains in their attitudes toward personal and social responsibility. (3) The effects of required community service did not significantly differ from the effects of voluntary community service indicated by other researchers using the same instrumentation. (4) Student satisfaction with the program can be predicted by the ratings they gave to four of the twenty items of the Community Checklist questionnaire. (5) Multiple positive relationships were found among the divisions of the SPRS, supporting the interrelationships of the instrument.
Subject Area
Academic guidance counseling|Educational sociology
Recommended Citation
Williams, Robert M, "The effects of required community service on the process of developing responsibility in suburban youth" (1993). ETD collection for University of Nebraska-Lincoln. AAI9333990.
https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/dissertations/AAI9333990