I have been working with colleagues at UCL to understand whether older volunteers receive greater benefits from volunteering engagement, and if so whether this was driven by their age or the year they were born (which involves the change in social meaning of volunteering over time).
We were also interested in whether volunteering and its health australia rcs data benefits varied across neighbourhoods. Understanding this is timely given the increasing place-based funding schemes and the current UK government’s Levelling Up commitment to help create stronger communities through volunteering and community activities.
To answer these questions, we analysed Understanding Society: UK Household Longitudinal study data. This rich and high-quality data includes information about participants’ socio-demographics, community group participation and volunteering engagement, as well as their health/wellbeing, which has allowed us to consider key variables when examining the long-term relationship between volunteering and mental wellbeing. In addition, Understanding Society provides geo-coded data in which participating households’ addresses are matched to neighbourhood zones (Lower Super Output Areas), enabling us to explore objectively the role of neighbourhoods in survey data.