Dimensions of Participation in Voluntary Associations

Abstract

In the growing literature on the term has been defined by some researchers as the number of affiliations with voluntary associations.' Perhaps the majority of the studies in this field, particularly those conducted in rural communities, have used the Chapin Social Participation Scale2 or some variant of it as an operational definition of participation.3 As originally developed by Chapin in the late twenties, the Social Participation Scale was one component of a measure of socio-economic status whose twofold purpose was described as follows: first, for research workers a rough scale for rating the home and the environment in order to permit the equating of these factors in experimental study; and second, for social workers, an objective measure of the home environment for prospective foster homes.4 The scale consists of the following five items and their arbitrary weights: membership, 1 point; attendance, 2; contributions, 3; committee membership, 4; office held, 5. In the many years in which the scale has been extensively used, the concept which it measures has remained virtually unanalyzed.5 Moreover, scant attention has been paid to the essential features of the social context of participation, viz., the voluntary association. Obviously participation in a voluntary organization involves different assumptions about motivation and group structure than does participation in an administrative organization, such as an army, a corporation, a governmental agency, etc. In 1951 Chapin himself attempted to fill this conceptual gap. He briefly identified two components in his scale: