First-Year Student Motivations for Service-Learning: An Application of the Volunteer Functions Inventory

This study extends a line of research focused on motivational factors that contribute to firstyear students’ reasons for engaging in servicelearning. Among firstyear students, altruisticallymotivated students (Christensen, Stritch, Kellough, & Brewer, 2015) and minority students (Pearl & Christensen, 2016) were not only more knowledgeable of servicelearning upon entering college but they were also more interested in enrolling in servicelearning. The present study employs the Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) (Clary et al., 1998) to explore the extent to which student traits are correlated with various motivations to enroll in servicelearning courses. We examine student responses to the VFI survey instrument using multiple analysis of variance (MANOVA). Our findings establish a foundation that better accounts for students’ “inputs” in order to better understand various servicelearning outcomes. We discuss the implications of our findings as they relate to higher education administrators and instructors in order to close the gap between servicelearning interest and enrollment, and to provide students with servicelearning experiences that satisfy their motivations and help them achieve their goals.