社会工作者主导型地位关系与志愿者的获得感

The Social Worker-dominant Status and Volunteers’ Sense of Gain

志愿者的获得感是防止志愿者流失的重要心理评价。目前,社会工作者主导型日趋成为社会工作者与志愿者在联动实践场景中主要的地位关系类型。然而,鲜有研究对社会工作者主导型地位关系对志愿者获得感的影响机制进行全面探讨。本研究采用2021年11月广东省社会工作者与志愿者合作促进会收集的“志愿服务获得感”主题调查数据,通过中介分析方法探究了社会工作者主导型地位关系对志愿者获得感的直接效应及二者之间的间接影响机制。通过统计分析发现,志愿者对社会工作者主导型地位关系的认同会对其获得感产生显著的直接正向影响,且会通过社会工作者与志愿者间的积极沟通对其获得感产生显著的间接正向影响。具体而言,社会工作者与志愿者之间在服务期望、服务感受与建议、分享生活事件、服务心得体会、服务方法技巧、规划组织发展、决策志愿服务项目、服务流程与分工安排等内容上保持积极的沟通,会显著增加志愿者对社会工作者主导型的地位关系的认同及志愿者的获得感。

Volunteers as well as social workers play important roles in social governance.According to the previous research,the relationship between social workers and volunteers in the actual scenes could be conceptualized into three types,namely,the social worker-dominant status,the social worker-assisted status,and the complete autonomy of volunteers.Since 2005,both the Chinese central and local governments have issued policies on strengthening the linkage between social workers and vol-unteers.This series of policies highly advocated the formation of a service pattern in which social workers lead volunteer ser-vices or volunteers assist social workers in social services.Therefore,the social worker-dominant status in the relationship between social workers and volunteers is widely emphasized and applied in most the social work practices in China.Howev-er,there are more and more attention aroused from the existing studies have shown that the social worker-dominant status might make volunteers lack the intrinsic motivation to participate and contribute,resulting in the risk of volunteer turnover.Nowadays in China,the loss of volunteers is one of the major factors restricting the development of non-profit organizations and volunteer services.Importantly,volunteers’sense of gain is a critical psychological evaluation that prevents the loss of volunteers.Howev-er,the effects of social worker-dominant status and its influence on volunteers’sense of gain have rarely been studied.In ad-dition,communication is an essential activity in the interaction between social workers and volunteers according to the previ-ous studies.The active communication behaviors by professional/salaried personnel,i.e.social workers,have been shown to increase the persistence of the volunteer engagement in the Western context.Therefore,specific questions explored by our study were including 1)under the context of the social worker-volunteer linkage mechanism in China,does a social worker dominant status relationship negatively affect volunteers’sense of gain?2)Could the active communications between social workers and volunteers be the buffer against the negative effect of social worker-dominant status on volunteers’sense of gain?This study used the data extracted from the survey on the theme of Gains of Volunteers in Social Service collected by the Association of Cooperation between Social Workers and Volunteers,Guangdong,China,in November,2021.The survey sample of volunteers who had cooperated with social workers once or more in D city of Guangdong Province was selected.After excluding the respondents with missing information on the core variables of interest,649 valid samples were finally in-cluded.This study examined both the direct effect of social worker-dominant status on volunteers’sense of gain,and the in-direct effect through positive communications by mediation analysis method.It was found from the results of this study that,first of all,54.08%of the volunteers reported that the social workers oc-cupied the dominant status during the cooperation between social workers and volunteers in their social service.Moreover,volunteers’subjective identification of the social worker-dominant relations significantly exerted a positive direct impact on their sense of gain.Interestingly,the active communications between social workers and volunteers in the interaction process played the mediating role between the volunteers’subjective identification on the social worker-dominant relations and the volunteers’sense of gain.That was to say,higher subjective identification of the social worker’s dominant status could in-crease the occurrence of active communications between volunteers with social workers,which would result in higher de-gree of volunteers’sense of gain.In our study,the active communications were measured by eight aspects of content,including having communications on 1)the service processes and arrangement,2)service experience,3)service suggestions,4)service expectations,5)service methods and skills,6)decision-making on voluntary service projects,7)planning organization development,and 8)sharing life events.Comparatively speaking,the results showed that active communications on service expectations could improve the highest degree of volunteers’sense of gain.Clear communications on service expectations could avoid misunderstand-ings between social workers and volunteers,and might achieve a better effect of enhancing volunteers’sense of gain.Addi-tionally,understanding the suggestions of services,sharing life events,and communicating experiences were also important and effective mediators against the negative effect of social worker-dominant status on volunteers’sense of gain.It could be seen from our detailed mediation analyses that the informal communications on exchanges of experiences,understanding of serving suggestions and sharing of life events had a better effect on enhancing the volunteers’sense of gain when compared with the formal communications,which included skills learning,decision-making and planning organization development.Therefore,it was highly suggested by our study that in the process of implementing the linkage mechanism between so-cial workers and volunteers in China,the governments should establish a regular publicity system to promote volunteers’un-derstanding of the value and significance of the linkage mechanism,and improving the communication skills of organization-al personnel with volunteers to enhance volunteers’proper identification on the social worker’s dominant status.The improvement of volunteers’identification would help to increase the quantity and quality of active communications between social workers and volunteers,thereby improving volunteers’clarity of service tasks and helping volunteers to master profes-sional service methods and skills. All these would help achieve the goals of the quality of volunteer services at the micro lev-el and the effectiveness of social governance at the ecological level. Therefore,government organizations and social work in-stitutions should explore a regular platform on which active communications between social workers and volunteers could be warranted. Full-cycle training on how to make effective communications between social workers and volunteers should al-so be on target to prevent the volunteers from passive status and inadequate motivation in the social worker-dominant rela-tionship. In the actual scene with volunteers,it would be essential for social workers to create equal communication opportu-nities and give timely verbal or action feedback on the communications with volunteers.