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Measuring Meaningful Service

Measuring Meaningful Service. Julia Rodemeier Cardinal Stritch University. Call for Research. In 2007, the National Youth Leadership Council (NYLC) identified the list of K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice.

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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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