Volunteering and Psychological Well-Being: Assessing Variations by Gender and Social Context

Abstract

A well-developed literature suggests that people who volunteer more often tend to enjoy better physical and mental health. The current study contributes to this work in three potentially important ways. First, the authors assess whether volunteering in religious settings is more strongly associated with well-being than volunteering in secular contexts. Second, they examine whether women volunteer more frequently than men. Third, they evaluate whether the relationship between volunteering in religious settings and well-being is stronger among women than among men. The data are from a nationally representative online survey (N = 1075). The findings suggest that more frequent volunteering in the church as well as more frequent volunteering in secular settings is associated with a greater sense of well-being. However, the difference between the two was not statistically significant. Second women volunteer at church more often than men, but significant gender differences in the rate of volunteering in secular settings did not emerge from the data. Third, volunteering at church was associated with a greater sense of well-being among women, but not among men.