I am working on the project using the Volunteer Supplement section in the CPS (2013). I had a question regarding VLTORG1 “Type of Volunteer Organization.” I went through the codebook, and I was hoping to find some clarification on how different volunteer activities were classified into different types of organizations. For example, here are a few questions that we had:
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What activiites were classifeid as “Other edcuational Group”?
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What are examples of an “interactional organization”?
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What was the difference between “Youth Services Group” and “Children’s Educational, Sports, or Recreational Group?”
Basically, any additional information about the classification of these organization types would be beneificial. Thank you for your help!
From the information available on the questionnaire, it looks like the respondent was prompted to respond freely to a question about the “type of organization” with which they volunteered. This answer is then re-coded to match the categories available in VLTORG1. Specifically, in regards to your questions: (1) I’d say an “other educational group” involves activities with an organization that focuses on education, but not on sports/recreational activities. This could be something like tutoring or mentoring activities, for example. (2) “International organization” could be really any organization that focuses their work on issues in an international context. (3) I’d say the difference between “youth services” and “Children’s educational, sports, or recreational” is the latter is focused on sports/recreational activities while the former could focus on other activities such as provision of health/medical services.