Università degli studi di Roma “Foro Italico”

Università degli studi di Roma “Foro Italico”
Dottorato di Ricerca in “Culture,disabilità e inclusione: educazione e formazione”
Coordinatore: Chiar.ma Prof.ssa Lucia de Anna
Voluntary work and social integration process of disabled people:
preliminary study in Campania
candidate: Luigi Salvio
Abstract:
Voluntary work has always held a primary function for social integration processes of disabled
people. In the light of politics integration used in Italy from the postwar period until now, it is
possible to say that the world of social associations, which is the carrier of needs of weak people,
has led to a lot of good results. Even if many documents have been written about voluntary
works and also many about disable people, it’s very hard to find any scientific analysis that could
establish a connection between the two phenomena.
The analysis pursued in Campania has the purpose to set this phenomena and then to develop an
international and national research. This work has been divided in five points: 1) analysis of
existing literature; 2) setting-up of research tool suitable on the same purpose (questionnaire); 3)
administration of the questionnaire; 4) processing data; 5) assessment of results and then put
forward a proposal.
The questionnaire, specifically developed for this research, has been divided into four points: 1)
questions aimed to define the sample survey (age, gender, occupation, education, etc.) and to
give the first “picture” of the phenomenon; 2) a set of twelve questions which will filter out the
voice of the volunteers, to have their point of view, their reasons, personal and professional skills
acquired and to know strength and weak point of their service; 3) the questionnaire with 5 degree
VFI - Volunteer Funcions Inventrory (Omoto, Synder, 1995) on Likert scale, a suitable
instrument confirmed in the United State, afterwards in Italy (Capanna, Steca, Imbimb 2002) to
measure the main reason which drives a person to challenge himself into voluntary activities; 4)
questionnaire on volunteers’ specific competences about integration of disabled people (for
social relation, help relationship, etc.), by answering on 5 degree of Likert scale, specifically
structured for this investigation with Professor Lucia De Anna's help.
The formation of samples has taken place through auto selection method. In this research have
been involved 82 volunteers of different background and associations living in three province of
Campania's region. The different organizations, responding to the framework-law about
voluntary work 266/1991,that has given their availability , were contacted from to the database
of service center of voluntary work - “Centri Servizi per il Volontariato” (CSV).
Data has been analyzed both on quantitative and qualitative evaluation and creates a relation into
each other through test of correlation, parametric and no parametric 's test.
The most visible result was the volunteer’s acknowledgement about increased relational
competence: if on the one hand, this confirm the things that used to identify the asset of
volunteer , on the other hand it will give suggestion to suppose new specific function. In this
sense, specific intervention would be addressed with people having disability problems; at the
same time these people are asking to be recognized as “normal people”. For these reasons the
volunteer could be set in between the two needs as a mediator.
And is exactly in this direction that the voluntary will go in the perspective of a future research.