Abstract
Drawing on public opinion and empirical research, one may advise people to participate in voluntary organizations because voluntary participation can improve their mental health and social well-being. However, do such benefits apply across different types of participation and across the life course? In this study, we investigated whether benefits to mental health and social well-being differ between nonpolitical and political participation and across age groups (preregistration is accessible at https://osf.io/kqcbe). Using 25 waves of data from the British Household Panel Survey and the Understanding Society (1991–2016), we conducted multilevel analyses with observations nested within participants in younger (14–29, n = 10,536), middle-aged (40–50, n = 4,955), and older (65–75, n = 3,059) adults. We used life satisfaction and GHQ-12 scores as measures of mental health, and social support and neighborhood belonging as measures of social well-being. We found only few and small significant effects at the within-person level: On occasions when younger adults reported political participation, they reported slightly higher neighborhood belonging than when they did not. On occasions when older adults reported nonpolitical or political participation, they reported slightly higher life satisfaction than when they did not. However, we found no significant differences between nonpolitical and political participation and among age groups. In sum, our findings qualify the opinion that voluntary participation yields significant benefits to engaged individuals. We discuss potential explanations, including characteristics of political participation in the United Kingdom.
Highlights
Voluntary organizations in the United Kingdom seek to recruit participants by emphasizing the benefits of participation to engaged individuals (Community Works, n.d.; Health Education England, 2017)
To group voluntary organizations into nonpolitical and political participation, we looked into each organization type and scanned the activities mentioned at the prominent websites of exemplary organizations for nonpolitical and political agendas
All our hypotheses referred to within-person change, we looked into between-person differences too because they indicate whether participants with higher rates of participation generally report better mental health and higher social well-being, which may point to potential selfselection of such individuals into voluntary participation (Dawson-Townsend, 2019; De Wit et al, 2015; Lühr et al, 2021)
Summary
Voluntary organizations in the United Kingdom seek to recruit participants by emphasizing the benefits of participation to engaged individuals (Community Works, n.d.; Health Education England, 2017). As attempts to exert political influence involve intergroup conflicts and unachieved goals and are sometimes regarded as morally reprehensible and selfish (Pavlova et al, 2021), political participation may not be as beneficial to engaged individuals as nonpolitical participation is In support of this assumption, several studies found stronger mental health and social well-being benefits for participation in religious or human service organizations than in environmental organizations, political parties, or political movement groups (Albanesi et al, 2007; Croezen et al, 2015; Vinson & Ericson, 2014; Yeung et al, 2018; but see Mazhari, 2015; Talò et al, 2014)
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