Fenomén dobrovolnictví v brněnských rodinách

This paper deals with volunteering and volunteers. The aim of this paper is to verify selected personality and social characteristics of volunteers on our specific sample. The study sample is formed by the participants of ELSPAC (European Longitudinal Study of Parenthood and Childhood) and the data used is from the eleven-year-old age (of the children from the project) period. The parents from this project were divided by sex and then into three groups. There are: 1. group of people who are actually volunteers, 2. group of people who were volunteers sometime in past, and 3. group of people who had never been volunteers. The determinants (which we defined as relevant for the assessment of characteristics) are: education, paid employment vs. unemployment, satisfaction in work, number of friends, religion, psychogenic difficulties (anxiety, depression, alcohol use, smoking), self-esteem, divorce, existence of mate. With the exception of variable "education", in which we univocally confirmed the link with voluntary work described in the majority of papers, our sample showed rather atypical outcomes. Our hypotheses about influence of religion or sex are not confirmed. Similarly there is no evidence for our hypothesis about possible compensation of some subjective frustrations through voluntary work.