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Measuring Meaningful Service

Explore the development and testing process of service-learning standards for meaningful service projects. Learn about the creation of survey questions, educator and student feedback, validity, reliability, construct validity, and additional outcome measures. Discover how correlations between meaningful service experiences and student outcomes were measured using statistical tests. Gain insights into the impact of service-learning on student engagement and civic skills.

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Measuring Meaningful Service

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  1. Measuring Meaningful Service Julia Rodemeier Cardinal Stritch University

  2. Call for Research • In 2007, the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) identified the list of K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. • Next step: the call in service-learning research is to “test the standards and indicators as predictors of outcomes” (Billig & Weah, 2008, p. 12)

  3. Service-Learning Projects

  4. Survey Development Process • Development of pilot questions • Educator focus group • Pilot survey • Student focus group • Factor analysis • Revision of survey items • Final meaningful service survey

  5. Development of Pilot Questions • Developed questions from meaningful service indicators Service-learning: • experiences are appropriate to participant ages and developmental abilities. • addresses issues that are personally relevant to the participants. • provides participants with interesting and engaging service activities. • encourages participants to understand their service experiences in the context of the underlying societal issues being addressed. • leads to attainable and visible outcomes that are valued by those being served. (NYLC, 2008, p. 10) • Three to four questions intended to address each indicator

  6. Educator Focus Group • Six service-learning educators (service-learning site) • Grade level coordinators • Teachers • Administrators • Read survey for • clarity of questions • fifth grade understandability • Verified that questions addressed meaningful service indicators

  7. Pilot Survey • 18 items on pilot survey • Likert-type scale 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree) • Administered electronically to 8 students from each of fifth through eighth grades (service-learning site) • n=32

  8. Student Focus Group • Directly following completion of pilot survey • Eight students from fifth grade who had completed pilot • Read for understandability • Suggestions made regarding item revision and instruction clarity

  9. Validity and Reliability • Factor Analysis revealed four sub-constructs Relevant and Interesting to Student Important to Friends and Community Age Appropriate and Challenging Personal Service Impact on Others • Cronbach alpha .94

  10. Survey Revision Survey revised so that each newly identified sub-construct contained at least four items • Added items to sub-constructs that had few items

  11. Final Survey • 23 items • Likert-type scale 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree) • Administered to all students in fifth through eighth grades (service-learning site) • Administered electronically during class at service-learning site • Optional survey • n=258

  12. Final Survey Reliability • Cronbach alpha • Entire survey .96; 23 items • Sub-construct A .93 ; 8 items • Sub-construct B .87; 6 items • Sub-construct C .86; 5 items • Sub-construct D .87; 4 items

  13. Final Survey Construct Validity

  14. Means of Meaningful Service Sub-Constructs by Grade Level 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree)

  15. Additional Measures Part of a larger study that also measures student civic, behavioral, and academic outcomes. • Civic Skills • Civic Engagement • Self-efficacy • Academic Engagement

  16. Measuring Results • Skewed data – reflective of much social science self-report surveys • Non-parametric statistical tests: • Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test – measuring difference between pre and post tests • Kruskal Wallis – measuring differences in meaningful service measures among grade levels • Spearman’s Rho & Kendall’s Tau – measuring correlations between meaningful service and student outcome

  17. Correlations • Sub-construct A (service that was interesting and engaging to the student) had a greater correlation with outcomes than any other sub-construct. • Gender differences • Of male correlations, meaningful measures most closely correlated with civic engagement scores. • Of female correlations, each meaningful sub-construct correlated differently with various outcomes. No obvious pattern of correlation. • At each grade level, the strongest correlations between meaningful service and outcome are:

  18. Questions and CommentsJulia Rodemeier jarodemeier@stritch.edu

  19. Bibliography Billig, S. H., Root, S., & Jesse. D. (2005). The relationship between the quality indicators of service-learning and student outcomes: Testing professional wisdom. In S. Root, J. Callahan, & S. H. Billig (Eds.), Improving service-learning practice: Research on models to enhance impact, 97–115. Greenwich, CT: Information Age. Billig, S. H., & Weah, W. (2008). K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. In Growing to greatness 2008: The state of service-learning. (pp. 8-15). St. Paul, MN: National Youth Leadership Council. DeVellis, R. F. (2003). Scale development: Theory and applications (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Field, A. (2005). Discovering statistics using SPSS 2nd ed.. London, England: Sage Publications. National Youth Leadership Council. (2007). Growing to greatness 2007: The state of service-learning. St. Paul, MN: Author. National Youth Leadership Council. (2008). Growing to greatness 2008: The state of service-learning. St. Paul, MN: Author.

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