Chapter Three: Characteristics of Summer of Service Participants been some underreporting of household income. About a quarter reported household incomes over $50,000 and a quarter reported incomes of less than $10,000. Almost 18 percent of respondents indicated that their households were receiving some form of public assistance, and 78 percent reported that they would be seeking financial aid for the 93-94 academic year. Nearly three quarters of the Summer of Service participants reported that they had been involved in an earlier community service experience, and almost two-thirds had performed in an earlier leadership role of some sort. The most common mechanisms through which participants first heard about the Summer of Service were through the recruitment efforts of organizations and/or schools involved in the summer initiative, through friends, or through recommendations by guidance counselors, teachers or parents. Almost ten percent of respondents also reported that they had heard one of the President's Call to Service speeches. The top three reasons given by participants for joining the Summer of Service were 1) to improve the lives of children, 2) to help other people and provide a community service, and 3) to explore future vocational or educational interests. This chapter has described the backgrounds and motivations of participants when they first began the Summer of Service. In the next chapter, the participants' assessments of the summer experience at the end of the program will be examined. CHAPTER FOUR PARTICIPANTS' ASSESSMENT OF THE SUMMER OF SERVICE EXPERIENCE This chapter presents the following information, in both narrative and tabular form: the reasons for participants' exit from the Summer of Service program; participants' assessment of the benefits that they derived from the Summer of Service experience; the extent to which participants felt they had developed an increased sense of civic responsibility from their Summer of Service experience; identification of skills that participants felt they acquired through the program; · overall participant satisfaction with the Summer of Service initiative; the ways in which the Summer of Service shaped participants' future plans; and interest of participants in future community service efforts. These data are derived from exit forms completed by participants at the end of their Summer of Service involvement. Discussions with the individual grantees suggest that a total of 1,464 youth were participants in the Summer of Service initiative." As of September 29, 1993, 1,389 properly completed participant exit forms had been received from program sites. These forms, which were used as the basis of this chapter's analysis, represent approximately 95 percent of the participants at the 16 Summer of Service sites. Participants' Exit from the Summer of Service Program Exhibit 5.1 presents the data on reasons for the participants ending their involvement with the Summer of Service. According to the completed exit forms: Almost 93 percent of the participants successfully completed the Summer of "Not every grantee was able to fill its full allocation of participant slots. For example, ICARE was only able to fill 145 of its 150 funded slots, and Ohio Wesleyn was only able to use 71 of its 75 slots. Chapter Four: Participants' Assessment of the Summer of Service Experience portions of the form that indicated that the individual did not satisfactorily complete the summer program and the reasons why.)12 "Personal reasons" were the most common reason given for premature exit from the Summer of Service programs. This category could involve a wide range of scenarios, including persons who experienced family, personal or health crises, individuals who disagreed with some aspects of the local program operations, or participants who were given the option to resign from their local Summer of Service program or face involuntary termination. 12 Although there may be some underreporting of participants who left the Summer of Service program, discussions with the Summer of Service sites suggest that such cases probably averaged no more than 2-3 persons per site and generally involved individuals who dropped out of the local program during the first or second week of the summer initiative (during orientation and training), before the Summer of Service forms had been fully implemented. Chapter Four: Participants' Assessment of the Summer of Service Experience Benefits to Participants of Summer of Service Involvement and Impact on Sense of Civic Responsibility In completing their exit forms, Summer of Service participants were asked to identify and to rank in order of importance up to five benefits realized through their involvement in the Summer of Service. The categories of benefits among which participants were asked to choose paralleled those offered on the enrollment forms where participants were asked to identify their reasons for joining the summer initiative (see Chapter 3). Exhibit 4.2 presents the unweighted frequencies of all the benefits identified by participants. Exhibit 4.3 presents the results when the participants' ranking of relative importance of the benefits are taken into account. Similar to what was seen in Chapter 3 in the analysis on reasons for joining the Summer of Service, the sequence of relative importance of benefits changes very little between the unweighted frequencies and the mean ranked scores. In fact, the only change in the ordering was that under the weighted analysis "improve the lives of children" moved from the second to the first highest-ranked benefit. (Although slightly more participants cited "serve the community/help others" than "improve the lives of children", those that mentioned the latter benefit gave it a higher ranking on average.) Exhibit 4.4, below, compares the frequencies and mean ranking scores between participants' answers at program start-up regarding reasons for joining and their responses given at the conclusion of the Summer of Service on benefits actually realized. The numeric ranking of the factors under each analysis is shown in parentheses and bold type in the exhibit. According to this exhibit: For the most part, the participants seem to have gotten the benefits they expected. In particular, they expected service to children or the community to be the biggest benefit, and they felt it was. Some types of personal experience turned out to be more common and more important than participants expected-especially making friends, and also working with different types of people. Some of the more specific or detailed potential benefits didn't materialize to the extent participants expected, particularly learning about educational and health issues and getting a future job. • Even though some participants who hoped to improve children's lives didn't feel they did so, most of them did and the population as a whole felt this was the most important benefit. Exhibit 4.2 Unweighted Frequencies of Participant Responses Regarding Benefits of Summer of Service Participation Actual Benefits of Summer of Service Participation Served My Community Improved the Lives of Children Learned About Different Ethnic/Cultural Groups Got to Make New Friends Developed Leadership Skills Got Scholarship/Post-Program Financial Benefit Learned About Health Issues Met Educational Course/Membership Requirements |