Scientists now recognize how quickly environmental conditions are changing, yet to monitor and understand these spatially distributed changes more dispersed quantitative and qualitative data are needed than ever before. The need for more comprehensive and robust data has created the burgeoning field of citizen science, which engages volunteers to monitor environmental changes and report this information to scientists. Precipitation monitoring networks like RainLog.org are considered one of the oldest types of citizen science with many networks in existence for over 100 years. RainLog.org is a more modern version of these original networks and was developed in response to a need to better characterize precipitation events and provide stakeholders with more robust precipitation totals and distributions throughout Arizona.RainLog.org is a statewide precipitation monitoring network that relies on volunteers across Arizona to report daily precipitation into an online reporting system. To ensure that these data are reliable, a quality assurance and quality control analysis (QA/QC) was completed on a subset of gauges in the Tucson area. Results indicate that although there are many errors inherent with any precipitation network, whether volunteer or scientist driven, these errors are for the most part identified using basic interpolation methods. This paper analyzes a range of user reporting and gauge type errors, discusses the significance of each error type and provides recommendations for mitigating reporting errors in any citizen science network.

Zoos and museums utilize docents, or volunteer educators, to help educate and entertain visitors through live animal demonstrations. Preparing volunteers to handle live animals is complex because volunteers must learn animal handling techniques, emergency protocols, interpretive material, be able to simultaneously show and monitor the animal, talk about it, take visitor questions, and be aware of safety concerns. Zoos are held accountable for animal welfare as a priority as well as volunteer and visitor safety.This study investigated barriers to preparing adult volunteers to handle live animals at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona. Adult docents and training staff members were interviewed about their perceptions of barriers from the previous year's animal handling training. Ten individual docent interviews, two docent focus groups, and four staff member interviews provided information about animal handling training challenges.Barriers included the resistance to change; specifically volunteers needed to recognize why changes in protocols were necessary so they would support changes. Volunteers expressed the desire to be part of the change with staff members rather than having protocols delivered to them. Miscommunication was a second barrier, originating from lack of consistent communication systems and volunteers feeling left out of the change process. Another barrier was volunteers' perception of authority in that volunteers invested time questioning staff about program changes based on staff qualifications rather than utilizing their time working with the animals. A fourth barrier was that volunteers shared that they felt pressure to perform or else they feel as though they failed part of their volunteer job. Finally recognizing that volunteers learn in different ways was a fifth barrier and many volunteers suggested the need to address a variety of learning styles.Adult learning theory provided a theoretical framework from which the barriers could be investigated. Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (1984) suggests that volunteers need to have animal handling training lessons presented with different teaching techniques or styles. Investing time into training staff about learning theories and teaching techniques may circumvent struggles with volunteers learning new techniques.

This thesis examines images of volunteer tourism—or voluntourism—on internet sites and describes how the photographs that appear on them contribute to maintaining global systems of power. Voluntourism is defined as either the payment of a program fee to an organization to travel to a developing country to perform various volunteer tasks or as the pause of gainful employment in one’s own country to work for an extended period of time in a developing country at a local wage. Currently there is debate as to the real benefits of volunteer tourism: is it truly the sustainable form of responsible, alternative tourism it is intended to be, or does it merely replicate the conditions of mass tourism and exploit those it is intended to benefit? This study explores visual representations of voluntourism in non-Western cultures in developing countries, and the consumption of those representations by participants in Canadian-based volunteer tourism organizations. The primary focus is photographs of interpersonal relationships between “voluntourists” and “voluntoured” in an examination of how culture and skin colour are manipulated in an attempt to maintain Westerners’ positions of power in pictures and, by extension, in global power relations. I suggest that a complex interaction of the pictorial codes of tourism, colonialism and the popular media converge in voluntourism’s photographs, resulting in images that simultaneously offer potential volunteers the opportunity to “do good” in the world as well as to consume cultural difference as a commodity. The main body of work is a visual discourse analysis of the photographs of five Canadian volunteer organizations’ websites. I identify the thematic categories used to promote voluntourism and discuss them in relation to patterns of mass tourism, charity advertisements, colonial travel narratives and their associated visual representation. This paper includes interviews with Canadian past volunteers to assess the importance of images to their experience of voluntourism. I close with a discussion of multiculturalism in Canada which brings together the experience of working within another culture in voluntourism and the conditions of Canadian multicultural society. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-09-27 20:23:25.935

The following study has been designed to address gaps in the volunteer abroad literature with respect to this growing phenomenon within Ontario’s secondary school system. Volunteer abroad programs at the secondary school level reflect a combination of attributes from study abroad, international service learning and volunteer tourism and are influenced by the rhetoric of global citizenship. As studies have shown that educators play an important role in shaping the volunteer abroad experience for their students, specifically in relation to how they choose sending and host organizations, integrate pre-departure training and facilitate reflection during and after the time abroad, this study includes an interpretive analysis of ten semi-structured interviews conducted with Ontario secondary school teachers who have facilitated volunteer abroad programs between the years 2006 and 2011. Interview responses have been critically analyzed through the lens of the global citizenship discourse, post-colonial studies and critical pedagogy theory in order to make sense of the nuances involved in how teachers conceptualize the volunteer abroad experience they provide for their students. Throughout this thesis I argue that teachers must engage in self-reflexive and collaborative practices in order to challenge their assumptions regarding the impacts of these programs on their students and host communities in the Global South. / Thesis (Master, Global Development Studies) -- Queen's University, 2012-01-26 13:15:26.772

No description available.

This descriptive study explores the experience of stress and coping by volunteers working in a cancer support program. Using a model developed by Mary Vachon (1987) who looked at occupational stress of health professionals in critical care areas, methods of content analysis were applied to interviews with six volunteers, three of whom were cancer survivors. Differences in the quality of the stress and in the coping experience were explored. Findings indicate that occupational stress was present for volunteers. The major stressors common to all were issues of relationships with patients and the demands of the role. For volunteers who had had a cancer diagnosis a major stressor distinguishing them was the death of volunteer colleagues. Overall, volunteers utilized a range of coping resources offered by the organization and from within themselves. Key implications include the need to acknowledge not only the strengths of the program and volunteers but the sources of stress, particularly the illness of volunteer colleagues. Maintaining an adequate staff-to-volunteer ratio is essential. Suggestions for volunteer support structures are offered.

The power of natural disasters to significantly and drastically alter the lives of the people they touch is vast, and the response rate of the provided aid can be the difference between a successful recovery and not. This study examines the relationship between natural disasters and volunteerism. The analysis makes use of panel data measurements on volunteer rate and volunteer hours per resident as well as FEMA measurements of major natural disasters from 2005 – 2012. I find that states that experience a natural disaster in the current year experience a significant and positive increase in volunteer rate in the year following the disaster. The findings highlight the importance of policy focused on harnessing volunteer labor in the wake of natural disasters.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hypothesis that there would be significant differences in selected personality traits between volunteers and nonvolunteers for a crisis intervention center, a 24-hour emergency telephone service. Volunteers for the center were required to complete a 32-hour training program to qualify for service in the center; a portion of the original volunteer population, however, did not complete the program. The final comparison, therefore, was made between the following three groups: (1) a group of volunteers who completed the required training program for a crisis intervention center, (2) a group of volunteers who did not complete the required training program for the center, and (3) a comparable group of non-volunteers.The five personality variables that were selected for measurement were ascendancy, responsibility, emotional stability, sociability, and dogmatism as measured by Gordon Personal Profile and Rokeach Dogmatism Scale. The selection of the traits was prompted by a review of literature which indicated that the traits were associated with the characteristics of effective counselors, with the intent of implementing the inevitable comparison that will be made between talents of volunteers and the requirements for effective service.A total of 179 subjects participated in the study. In order to validate comparisons that were made between volunteers and non-volunteers, the volunteer sample, the total group of persons attending the initial session of the training, was stratified into male:female and student: non-student groups before the non-volunteer population was selected. Established groups were then met by the examiner, tested, and invited to volunteer for the crisis center; data from those declining the invitation to serve were used to form the non-volunteers.Three statistical procedures were used to test the hypotheses: a one way analysis of variance, an analysis of covariance, and Scheffe's method of comparing means following a significant F test. Of the four null hypotheses, all were rejected. Review of the data led to the following conclusions:(1) Volunteers for a crisis center were more ascendant, more responsible, more emotionally stable and less dogmatic than those who chose not to volunteer.(2) Volunteers who completed the training program and volunteers who did not complete were alike on every trait except emotional stability. Completing volunteers were most stable.(3) A large part of the observed variances were accounted for by the female population. Female volunteers differed significantly from female non-volunteers on ascendancy, responsibility, emotional stability and dogmatism. Male volunteers differed from male non-volunteers only on the trait of dogmatism.(4) Volunteers for a crisis center exhibited the characteristics associated with effective counselors to a more significant degree than did the non-volunteers. These characteristics included open-mindedness, responsibility, stability, and flexibility.Implications were drawn concerning the use of volunteers in mental health programs on the basis of self-selection in conjunction with a short, intense training program. Recommendations were made for further research to determine similarities in other volunteer groups for other mental health projects, to investigate further the wide variances observed in the female population, and to more clearly define effectiveness for mental health roles.

The purpose of this research is to explore the context of youth recreational soccer, and to examine how coaches volunteering in this context learn to coach soccer. Framed within Jarvis’ (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) theory of lifelong learning and employing a mixed-methods approach, this dissertation research had two distinct phases. Phase One involved the collection of data via an on-line survey from 433 recreational youth soccer coaches from Eastern Ontario. The survey served to collect demographic information, as well as general information about their team, their role as a recreational coach, and their approach to learning. The data analysis for the on-line surveys was comprised of an analysis of descriptive statistics. Phase Two involved semi-structured interviews. Recruited through their participation in Phase One, 30 coaches were purposefully targeted and interviewed based on their varied biographies, experiences, and social contexts. Additionally, seven soccer administrators were interviewed. Interview data was analyzed according to the principles of thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2006). Findings examine the biographies of youth recreational coaches, their coaching context, how recreational coaches learn to coach, issues of shared responsibilities related to learning, as well as practical implications. It is suggested that recreational coaches differ from one-another on many factors, and that the context of recreational youth soccer is similarly diverse and presents unique challenges to coaches. Recreational youth coaches learn to coach through a variety of sources; mostly through informal learning situations. Responsibilities surrounding coach development fall on the shoulders of individual coaches and clubs, as well as regional, provincial, and national associations; and suggestions for increased engagement in this regard are provided.

Uppsatsen behandlar eventvolontärer och deras motivationsfaktorer, och syftar till att identifiera vad som motiverar individer till att spendera sin fria tid engagerad i denna aktivitet. Forskare menar att eventvolontärer är oumbärliga för event och att de därmed är betydelsefulla för turismen. Eftersom volontärarbete utförs på fritiden är den fria tiden en förutsättning för aktiviteten. Forskare betonar att individer alltmer eftersträvar en aktiv fritid, där volontärarbete inbegrips, och effektivitet och erfarenhet kan nås. Eventvolontärers motivationer har studerats utifrån en kvalitativ intervjuansats i syfte att nå en djupare förståelse för individers motivationer, vilka sedan analyserats utifrån existerande teori. Empirin har kategoriserats efter teman som visar på att eventvolontärer motiveras av flertalet faktorer som existerar samtidigt. En del motivationer förekommer i tidigare studier medan andra uppfattas som nytillkomna. Tid, nyfikenhet och nöje är några av de motivationer som engagerar till medverkan. / This essay discusses event volunteers and their motivational factors, and aims to identify the motivations for individuals wanting to spend their free time engaged in this activity. Researchers agree that event volunteers are indispensable for events and therefore important for tourism. Since volunteer work is performed during leisure time, leisure is a prerequisite for this activity. Researchers emphasize that individuals are increasingly searching for active leisure, where volunteer work is included, and effectiveness and experience can be reached. In order to reach a deeper understanding of individuals’ motivations, this subject has been studied from a qualitative interview approach, which was later analysed through existing theories. The empirical data has been categorized by themes that indicate that event volunteers are motivated by several motivations that exist simultaneously, some of which occur in previous studies while others are perceived as new additions. Time, curiosity and pleasure are some of the motivational factors that engage people in participation.