Volunteering and motivation to improve the training of undergraduate students. Differentiating factors in Valencian universities

Abstract

The reasons that motivate university students to develop volunteer actions are multiple. These can be putting skills into practice, obtaining professional learning, acquiring pre-employment experience and improving the curriculum. The objective of the research is focused on analyzing the motivations towards the participation in volunteering of undergraduate students (with experience in volunteering or not) of the five face-to-face universities of Valencia. Likewise, the existing differences are observed based on sex, the course and the students’ area of knowledge. For this, a quantitative research design was used, applying the University Student Motivation Questionnaire (CMV-AU) to a sample of 1186 students (2019/2020 academic year). This questionnaire, adapted and validated with this sample, is based on the Volunteer Function Inventory (VFI) by Clary et al. (1998). The results show that the most important motivations for students are the expression of prosocial values, the acquisition and implementation of skills and knowledge, and the improvement of the curriculum. Likewise, it is observed that there are differences in the students according to the variables analyzed. This coincides with the results of different previous studies. In this way, it is concluded that university students present greater learning motivation and curriculum improvement than other groups, especially female students, first-year students, and Health Sciences and Social Sciences students.