Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 49-51) Also available in print.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2006. / Title from title screen (site viewed on Oct. 6, 2006). PDF text: 88 p. ; 3.62Mb. UMI publication number: AAT 3213440. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in microfilm, microfiche and paper format.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 194-205).

While it is an established fact that participation in voluntary organizations varies directly with social status, the more complex issue of the relationship between the pattern of individuals' rank positions in several status hierarchies and participation still remains unsettled. The purpose of this study is to reexamine Lenski's proposition that status inconsistency is an obstacle to participation in voluntary organizations. The reasoning behind this proposition is that people who have inconsistent, or unequally evaluated, statuses are often exposed to disturbing experiences in social interaction. They react to those experiences with a tendency to avoid or withdraw from certain forms of social intercourse, such as participation in voluntary organizations. It is therefore hypothesized that persons with inconsistent statuses have fewer memberships and are less likely to hold office in voluntary organizations than individuals whose statuses are consistent. The hypotheses are tested in a secondary analysis of survey data for samples of employed adults in two Canadian cities. The status dimensions are education, occupation, and income. Several status inconsistency variables are used, each defined in terms of different combinations of ranks on a pair of status dimensions. The analysis is guided by the assumption that a status inconsistency effect may be conceived as due to statistical interaction between the constituent status variables. Such effects might be present when an additive model of the relationships between two status variables and a given participation variable proves to fit the data inadequately. The analyses, using a dummy-variable multiple regression format, reveal that differences between observed values on the participation variables and the values predicted by a model of additive status effects are generally small and do not show the patterns expected under the hypotheses. Moreover, a nonadditive model, which includes a status inconsistency variable in addition to the two status variables from which it is formed, fails to explain even a moderate amount more variance in the dependent variables than the corresponding additive model. These results suggest that inconsistency between achieved socioeconomic statuses has no appreciable effect on membership or office-holding, over and above the effects of the status variables themselves. The conclusion is that the proposition of a negative association between status inconsistency and participation in voluntary organizations is not supported by the data of this research. It is suggested that these negative findings may be explained in part by dubious assumptions in the status inconsistency argument so far as it relates to participation and by methodological problems associated with identifying status inconsistency effects. However, the idea that frustrating and unpleasant social experiences may adversely affect participation in voluntary organizations is^ sensible and deserves further investigation. / Arts, Faculty of / Sociology, Department of / Graduate

In this thesis, I seek to advance our knowledge about the factors that make people start and stop volunteer work, thus shedding light on the capacity of volunteering and voluntary associations to foster social cohesion. In particular, my goal is twofold: first, to reveal to what extent voluntary associations function as meeting places for people from different social backgrounds, and second, to assess the resilience of civic participation in the face of labor market experiences that might undermine such engagement. I make three core contributions to the literature on voluntary association involvement. First, I pay special attention to the organizational contexts in which volunteers are embedded. Second, I adopt a dynamic approach, analyzing decisions to start and stop volunteering. Third, I attempt to disentangle alternative mechanisms that could drive the associations observed between volunteering and its potential determinants. Analyzing data from The Netherlands and the United States, my findings expose limits to the integrative capacity of voluntary association involvement. As it turns out, the civic landscape is strongly segregated. People tend to sort into voluntary associations where they mostly meet people with similar characteristics as themselves. Such sorting occurs along multiple social dimensions, including educational attainment, religiosity, gender, and ethnicity. This constrains the opportunities for building relationships that cut across existing social boundaries. Indeed, these sorting processes can reproduce in the civic domain fault lines that dominate other spheres of life. Furthermore, civic engagement and participation in the labor market are shown to be strongly intertwined, with the former breaking down when labor force exits occur. Voluntary association involvement is, therefore, of limited value for drawing labor force outsiders into public life. However, this chain of events does not necessarily unfold, as long as labor force outsiders retain aspirations to participate in social life.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-98).

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaf 109-115).

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1998. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-98) Also available in print.

Thesis (M. Soc. Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 2006.

Thesis (M.S.W.)--University of Hong Kong, 2004.