Hot
Topic Archive
December
2006
Keeping the statisticians honest
 By
OzVPM Director Andy
Fryar
Mark
Twain was once quoted as saying there are 'lies, damn
lies and statistics' , and this month I want to take
the opportunity to explore some of the issues surrounding
the way that we capture volunteering statistics, not
only here in Australia, but globally.
I
must confess this has been a topic sitting latently
in wait for some time, and was stirred recently when
I saw a press release issued by Jennifer Rankine,
the Minister for Volunteers in South Australia . The
document claimed that a recent survey, commissioned
by the Office for Volunteers in SA in partnership
with the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showed
that volunteering rates in South Australia had risen
from 38% in 2000 to 51% in 2006.
My
first instinct was scepticism, especially considering
that the SA Government's 'State Strategic Plan' had
established a target of, coincidentally, a 50% volunteering
rate by 2010, so I was keen to take a look at the
survey they used to determine the new measures. I
have long maintained that the way we have traditionally
gathered data was under-representative of the actual
number of people volunteering, and when I looked over
the survey questions that were asked I was actually
pleasantly surprised!
For
the first time that I can recall, questions were actually
asked in such a way as to help prompt respondents
to consider whether or not their activities counted
as volunteering or not. In fact here's the actual
question that was asked about 'formal' volunteering
(keep in mind this was a telephone survey) :
"The
first section of the survey is about FORMAL volunteering
and I just need to explain how we're defining that.
Formal volunteering means unpaid, voluntary help
willingly given in the form of time, services or
skills for an organisation, club or association.
It excludes voluntary work done overseas and donations
of money or goods don't count as volunteering. Some
examples include: sports and physical recreation;
welfare or community groups; health; emergency services;
schools, education and training; service groups;
religious groups; environmental; animal welfare;
business or professional; unions; law, justice or
political groups; arts or heritage; parenting, child
or youth groups; international aid or development.
In the last 12 months, have you done any unpaid
volunteering for any of these or similar types of
organisations?"
This is a long
way from the questions that have been asked in the
past to determine similar statistics. Let's take the
question that was included in the 2006 census as a
comparison:
"In
the last 12 months did the person spend any time
doing voluntary work through an organisation or
group?
* Exclude anything you do as part of your paid employment
or to qualify for a government benefit
* Exclude working in a family business"
Now bearing
in mind that this was also the 51st question in the
census, what do you think the chances are that it
will give us a clear picture of volunteering rates
in Australia ? For instance, do you think volunteer
firefighters or pro-bono lawyers will resonate with
this question? What about people working through their
local church group or helping with their children's
school class?
Don't get me
wrong, I think the achievement of having a question
included in the census is a major step forward, and
I know Volunteering Australia lobbied hard for that
to happen. I also appreciate that there are many limitations
about just how long a question can be.
However what
I truly believe we need to start to do is fashion
some clear and concise questions that are asked every
time a survey on volunteering participation rates
are conducted. Not only will this begin to give us
a clearer picture of true volunteering rates, it will
also mean that we are able to more accurately cross
reference the growth or decline in volunteering trends
across time. In fact, if we go so far as to adopt
some international standards for questions (this maybe
a great role for IAVE) , we could also more accurately
cross reference national data across countries.
At the moment,
Mark Twain's verse, quoted at the beginning of this
Hot Topic is ringing truer than ever before. For instance,
in the press release I quoted earlier, Minister Rankine
was quoted as saying:
".the
results were indicative of the excellent relationship
that has developed between the government and the
volunteer sector since the signing of the 'Advancing
the Community Together' partnership in 2003"
More likely
it is a case of comparing chalk to cheese, and while
a pleasing result, I for one would argue that volunteering
rates have not actually risen by the cited amount
at all. In fact I believe they have always been at
around that level, it's just that in South Australia
, they asked the questions in the right way for a
change. A direct comparison between the two surveys
is, in my opinion, just plain misleading.
The other important
thing that the Office for Volunteers survey did was
to ask other specific questions about informal volunteering
levels. This is one of the only times I have seen
these questions asked so succinctly and is a real
pleasure to see. It has always seemed mysterious to
me that we only want to try and measure volunteering
done through organisations. This is especially relevant
when the SA survey actually showed more people participate
in informal volunteering than formal volunteering.
For those of
you interested in the numbers, the survey showed the
following breakdown:
. People
who only undertake formal volunteering = 22%
. People
who only undertake informal volunteering = 24%
. People
who undertake both informal AND formal volunteering
= 28%
. When
both components are taken into account the survey
showed that 75% of people in South Australia participate
in some sort of volunteering
The solution
I believe is that the established volunteering sector
need to take a good look at the SA survey and make
some sort of agreement to use this (or something similar)
as an ongoing base measurement for volunteering in
our country and abroad.
Further, I
believe there are a whole range of questions that
are just not being asked very much at all:
. How
can we determine the numbers of volunteer program
managers in the field?
. How
many of these are paid vs volunteers themselves?
. Levels
of pay and education of volunteer program managers?
. How
do we capture volunteering rates in children? (even
the SA survey started at 15 year olds)
. How
do we begin to quantify the differences that volunteers
make rather than just the number of hours that they
contribute?
Of course,
the final piece in the puzzle comes when we start
to ask the question about just what is going to change
as a result of these new statistics?
For instance,
if in South Australia the rate of formal volunteering
really has risen by 13%, does that mean the SA Government
are going to start putting 13% more funding into supporting
volunteerism structures such as creating volunteer
management training packages and financial support
for groups like our state volunteer centres? Let's
face it, the numbers need to be a catalyst for change
or they amount to not much more than digits on a piece
of paper.
We are heading
in the right direction and beginning to ask some good
questions, but let's make 2007 a year to try and work
collaboratively to determine what we are going to
ask for the benefit of the sector into the future.
To download
the SA survey visit http://www.ofv.sa.gov.au/pdfs/SA_Volunteer_Survey_report.pdf
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