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Volume IV, Issue 4, July 2004

Involvement in Civil Society Groups: Is It Good for Your Health?


A. M. Ziersch and F. E. Baum
Research to Practice
Reviewed by Steven Howlett

"Involvement in Civil Society Groups: Is It Good for Your Health?"
A. M. Ziersch and F. E. Baum
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 2004; 58:493-500

It seems counter-intuitive for most people working in volunteering that such participation should be bad for your health. A new research paper in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health claims just this, flying in the face of much other evidence. Is volunteering bad for you, or should we pay more attention to the way in which we involve volunteers and acknowledge that bad (or no) volunteer management may offset the positive impacts of volunteering? This Research-to-Practice looks at a new survey and asks whether it is volunteering or the organisation of volunteering that the authors found problematic.

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Comments

Heather Blakeley, Group Development Officer, National Association for Colitis and Crohn's Disease, Hertfordshire England

August 17th, 2004, 8:11am

The methodology used for this research is definitely open for debate. I work with volunteers who are chronically ill and because of their illness find it difficult to maintain full-time employment. These volunteers say that the volunteering helps their self-esteem and allows them to do something which is useful. Their volunteering helps them have a more positive outlook on life.