Child Development

TITLE: Motivating factors in voluntary work AUTHOR: 5064-753-9

The Course Leader: HMYPYC80 Department of Psychology University of South Africa 2012-19-05

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Dear Sir / Madam RE: Research proposal: Factors that motivate voluntary work I am currently associated with Unisa where I am an honours student in Psychology. I have a special interest in altruistic acts and what motivated them, more especially voluntary work, which I also have been involved in over the years and still are. I attach a proposal for further research in this field. The reason for approaching you is to submit this proposal for assessment by a peer group. The proposed project is required for my course in research methodology. It, therefore, seems appropriate to submit this project for assessment by my peers in order to see what they think of the topic and of my ability to write a proposal for a scientific study. I hope to hear from you soon.

Yours sincerely S. N Mthimkhulu 37 Bidston Road Westridge Durban

FACTORS MOTIVATING VOLUNTARY WORK

Introduction:

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The study will investigate what motivates people to volunteer, the factors that motivate people to volunteer, what they gain from this and their experiences while volunteering. This will be done through gathering data from interviews. This study aims to study more specifically whether people are motivated to volunteer either by their altruistic or egoistic. This data information will be deduced through thematic content analysis. I hypothesis however that people are not encouraged by altruistic motives, not that I disagree with theorists who say that human are intrinsically made to act altruistically (Maner& Galliot, 2007) but all motives for volunteering are linked to some sort of gain for the individual, be it being recognised as a ‘good person’ or feeling like you are that kind of person, hence no matter the motive it all ends up at the ‘self’ and therefore egoistic.

Literature Review:

The research problem is what...