Becoming an Older Volunteer: A Grounded Theory Study

Sample size: 40 publication Evidence: moderate

Author Information

Author(s): Janet Witucki Brown, Shu-li Chen, Linda Mefford, Allie Brown, Bonnie Callen, Polly McArthur

Primary Institution: Knoxville College of Nursing, The University of Tennessee

How do older adults incorporate volunteering into their identities?

The study found that older volunteering is a developmental process influenced by continuity, connection, and commitment.

Older adults often do not label themselves as volunteers but as people who 'help out'.
Helping out is influenced by early life experiences and a sense of duty.
Volunteering provides physical, emotional, and spiritual benefits to older adults.
Recognition of a need is the first step in the process of helping out.
Older adults adapt their volunteering activities to fit their physical abilities.

Older people often help out in their communities, and this helping becomes a part of who they are as they grow older.

Grounded theory secondary data analysis of 40 interviews with older volunteers.

Participants self-identified as Christians, which may limit the findings' applicability to other groups.

Small sample size, lack of ethnic diversity, and all participants from the same geographic area.

24 men and 16 women, mostly Caucasian, mean age 68.64 years, majority married and semiretired.

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