Examine the Relation Between Doing Volunteer Work and one's Well-Being

ED 309 Applied Research, ​Fall 2016 Syllabus    

Nihal Yeniad    E­mail: ​nihal.yeniad@boun.edu.tr ​Phone: 0.212.359.6574   

Proposal peer review (due: Oct 14)

Researcher Group ID:        18                       Reviewer Group ID:    10

REBUTTAL LETTER (OUTLINE)

Summary of the proposed study:(The main goals of the proposed study in a concise way  ­ about two to four sentences – in  your own words!)                       

The proposal we have reviewed aims to examine the relation between doing volunteer work and one's well-being. Researchers expect positive relation between variables. This research is intended to complete in Bogazici University with 100 students. Half of the participants will be selected from members of Bogazici University Social Service Club and the rest will be selected from students who are not a member of any club. Doing research, two scales will be used. These are subjective well- being scale and self-developed questionnaire in addition to demographic information sheet.

Strong aspects of the proposed study:                       

There are many studies which examine the relation between volunteerism and well- being. Therefore, in the literature part, researchers have referred various articles. This shows that there are many researchers who are curious about this subject. In addition, size of the selected sample (n=100) is enough to conduct research in a university. This provides to obtain more convenient data about participant. Also, subjective Well Being Scale is valid and reliable. This makes easier to evaluate the results.

Limitations: (at least two limitations – the potential obstacles that the researchers may encounter with while collecting or analyzing or interpreting data)                

One of the variables which is well-being is not defined conceptully and operationally. Besides, even though volunteerism is defined conceptually, is not defined operationally. Therefore, variables are not explicit and these might affect procedure and results. For example, well-being can be defined psychologically, physically and socially. These kinds might have different relations with being volunteer.

While conducting subjective well-being scale, researchers have to be careful about confounding variables. Because many factors have influence on one's psychological well-being and one's mood might change frequently. For instance, one might be sick, one might be hangover, one might be broken up with their girlfriend, boyfriend. Besides, an extraordinary incident might be experienced like bomb attack, a suicide etc. Therefore, researchers have to be sure about that participants’' well-being status stem from their voluntary works.

In the literature part, there are many research about this issue but they are not explained comprehensively. References is not analyzed and critiqued. Results of various studies is not compared or contrast. In addition, references is not well organized so it is very hard to follow the relevancy between references.

There are inappropriate words in the research because we witnessed words like cause-affect-prove. However, it should be a correlational study, so concepts should be used accordingly. In addition, researchers have called sample as experimental and control group but in correlational study there is not such a distinction in sample.

Procedure part is missing. Researchers should detailed every necessary process in this part while conducting research. For example, the ways of collecting data (by email, by hand or through social media), implementing scales (pretest and posttest), information about the environment while participants are filling the tests, and receiving permission from necessary establishment have to be indicated.

There are no references of scale and each mentioned researches in the references part. References in each part are not well-organized. Order of the references is problematic in a way that they are not sorted alphabetically and each start of references is not appropriate for APA format in such a manner that they are not indented.