PhD: Exploring factors influencing volunteer uptake in peer-volunteering active ageing interventions within Bangladeshi and Chinese communities
This research is led by Helena Bilsborough as part of her PhD Fellowship. For more information about Helena’s research interests see our PhD Fellowship page.
What are we trying to do?
This project aims to explore the experiences of helping others, and the barriers and facilitators to being a peer-volunteer held by people from the Bangladeshi and Chinese communities in Greater Manchester. This is to explore whether our recruitment methods for peer-volunteering trials, such as the ACE, (Active Connected Engaged study), are applicable for different communities.
We are also seeing if any particular demographic factors are linked with certain motivations to volunteer, and if both demographic factors and particular motivations are linked with peer-volunteer drop-out.
Why is this important?
Peer-volunteering interventions, such as those included in ACE, aim to prevent decline in physical functioning in older adults by encouraging people to become more engaged physically and socially within their communities.
To be able to reach isolated and inactive people from different ethnic groups, we need to make sure that we are recruiting peer-volunteers from these groups, as we know that people prefer to be paired with someone from a similar background to themselves. If we can explore the potential barriers and facilitators for these different communities, we can work out what would be the best way to implement peer-volunteering programmes so that they reach as many people as possible.
How are we doing it?
Focus groups and one-to-one interviews have been conducted with members of both the Chinese and Bangladeshi communities in Greater Manchester. These discussed: experiences around helping others; language to describe helping behaviours; barriers, facilitators and perceived benefits of volunteering and peer-volunteering; and thoughts about current recruitment methods.
We are also looking at current ACE volunteer data to see if there are any links between motivation, demographic data, and drop-out so that we can see if particular groups are more motivated to peer-volunteer for certain reasons, and if particular motivations to peer-volunteer can predict drop-out.
Who are we working with?
This PhD is linked with the Active, Connected, Engaged Trial – a multicentre randomised controlled trial led by the University of Birmingham in collaboration with:
- The University of Manchester
- Cardiff Metropolitan University
- University of Exeter
- Cardiff University
- Public Health England
- Royal Voluntary Service
- Age UK
Contact info:
PhD Fellow
Helena Bilsborough