4-H Youth Volunteer Retention in Science Projects

Retention of volunteers and participants is a critical concern for programs that rely on their manpower, but limited empirical research exists, especially on youth volunteers. This descriptive, cross-sectional quantitative study examined the influence of volunteer motivation, participation, and science project type on the retention of 4-H youth volunteers ages 12 to 19 years participating in science projects in 3 states. An instrument was created for this study that included both existing survey scales and researcher-developed items based on combined research from the citizen science, volunteer development, and youth development fields. The research revealed that consistency and engagement were correlated with the predictors of retention, but race was not. 4-H science programs have a significantly higher likelihood of retaining youth participants than 4-H citizen science programs. Suggestions for youth educators to develop retention strategies are discussed based on the findings and future research into youth volunteer engagement is proposed.

135 participants merely perform and practice the scientific process. Yet, adult volunteer attrition rates in three citizen science programs were estimated between 80 to 95% (Rotman et al., 2014) and there is no data on youth volunteer retention. This study explores the critical issue of youth volunteer retention in science and citizen science projects.

Review of Literature
Despite retention being identified as a key concern, limited empirical research on volunteer retention exists (Newton et al., 2014). A systematic review of the literature revealed only six articles focused on citizen science volunteer retention: Crimmins et al. (2014); Frensley et al. (2017); Martin et al.(2016); Seymour & Haklay (2017); van der Wal et al. (2016); and West and Pateman (2016). Increased mobility and feedback from scientists have been found to be predictors of retention in adult citizen science volunteers (Crimmins et al., 2014;Martin et al., 2016;Seymour & Haklay, 2017;van der Wal et al., 2016) and may be transferable to youth.
Youth volunteer retention in citizen science programs has not been studied. However, a study examining young adults' environmental volunteerism, found that those motivated to volunteer for social reasons were more likely to invest greater amounts of time in volunteering than individuals with other motivations (McDougle et al., 2011). Demographic variables such as gender, race, and ethnicity have also been shown to be predictors of volunteer participation and youth participation in organized activities (Bohnert et al., 2010;Mahoney et al., 2009). The question remains: are they predictors of retention?

Conceptual Framework
In a literature review of research on youth involvement in organized activities, Bohnert et al. (2010) proposed a conceptual model of participation in organized activities (OA; see Figure 1). This framework was utilized in this study.
While many previous studies have looked at the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of citizen science project volunteers, this study takes a functional approach to motivation, focusing on "the personal and social functions being served by an individual's thoughts, feelings, and actions (Snyder, 1993)" (Clary et al., 1998(Clary et al., , p. 1517. The Volunteer Functions Inventory (VFI) describes six functions potentially served by involvement in volunteer activities: values, understanding, social, career, protective, and enhancement.

Figure 1. The Conceptual Model of Participation in Organized Activities
Note. Proposed by Bohnert et al. (2010, p. 579). Reprinted with permission.
Measuring retention, particularly in a cross-sectional study, is difficult. Research in human resource management has shown that intention to stay and the affective component of organizational commitment-an individual's "emotional attachment to, identification with and involvement in, the organization" (Allen & Meyer, 1990, p.1)-are predictors of retention in employees. These two indicators of retention have been adapted by the volunteer literature (Newton et al., 2014) and were utilized in this study to measure the retention of 4-H youth volunteers in science projects.

Purpose and Objectives
The primary purpose of this study is to determine if relationships exists between volunteer motivation, participation, and science project type and retention of 4-H youth ages 12 to 19 years participating in science projects (see Figure 2).

Research Questions
1. What are 4-H participants' attitudes towards science programs in terms of retention as measured by affective commitment (AC) and intention to continue volunteering (ICV)?
2. Is there a relationship between 4-H participants' volunteer motivation measured by score on VFI and retention in science projects?
3. Is there a relationship between 4-H youth's participation in science projects as measured by engagement, duration, consistency, intensity, and dosage and retention? 4. What differences in retention exist between participants based on gender, race/ethnicity, and science program characteristics?

Population and Sample
The target population was 4-H participants between the ages of 12 and 19 years who were participating in citizen science programs. The accessible population was identified by 4-H professionals and through social media with hashtags #citizenscience, #science, #STEM and #4H. In total, 180 4-H youth from Louisiana, Tennessee, and Virginia participated in the study African American (n = 42) 16.5% multiracial (n = 29), 10.2% Hispanic or Latino (n = 18), 1.1% American Indian or Alaska Native (n = 2) and 1.1% Asian (n = 2). Four individuals did not report race/ethnicity. Of the 180 respondents in the study, 132 (73.3%) participated in 4-H science programs and 48 (26.7%) participated in 4-H citizen science programs.

Instrument
Scales related to volunteer engagement, retention, and motivation were located in the survey; their descriptions can be found in Table 1. Scoring for all three subscales of engagement, both retention measures, and all six subscales of motivation were calculated mean scores (see Table   1). The majority of these scales have reported internal consistency from previous studies: Cronbach's alpha for the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement subscales ranged from .67 to .95, .79 to .84, and .60 to .90, respectively (Champine & Johnson, 2017;Li & Lerner, 2013). Cronbach's alpha for the affective commitment scale ranged from .806 to .872 (Eisinga et al., 2010). A systematic review of the VFI discovered eight studies that provided data on Cronbach's alpha for the total scale with a mean internal consistency of .90, and a range between .83 and .94 (Chacón et al., 2017).

Data Analysis
Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 25 statistical software. Missing data were coded as 99, a value that cannot occur as a real data value in any of the construct responses. The first objective was descriptive; frequency and percent were reported for all responses. Objectives two, three, and four were correlations. Pearson correlation coefficients were computed to determine relationships between two quantitative variables. Spearman's rank-order correlations were run between two variables where at least one was measured on an ordinal scale. For the independent sample t-tests, the p value was set at p = .008 because six different t-tests were conducted. Race/ethnicity was also coded as non-White (0) and White (1) for independent ttest analysis.

Results
Descriptive information about the study participants' responses to all six constructs of the VFI and the five measures of participation have been described in Table 2. A Cronbach's alpha of 0.7 and above is generally viewed as an indicator of a reliable scale, although Kline (1999)

Retention
On average, 4-H participants had positive responses indicating agreement when asked questions about feeling connected to their program (AC) and if they planned to continue volunteering in the next 12 months (ICV; see Table 2).

Motivation and Retention
Results of Pearson correlations indicated there was a positive relationship between all six motivational constructs and participant's affective commitment and intention to continue volunteering (see Table 3). The strongest correlation was between the functional motivation enhancement, that centers on the growth and development of an individual's ego, and the intention to continue volunteering (r[173] = .78, p < .01).

Participation and Retention
Results from Pearson's correlations between all three dimensions of engagement-behavioral, emotional, and cognitive-and the two predictors of retention showed significant positive relationships between all the variables (see Table 4

Demographics and Retention
Independent sample t-test were conducted. There was a significant difference in the scores for intention to continue volunteering between girls (M = 3.03, SD = .72) and boys (M = 2.61, SD = 1.06), t(160.73) = 3.08, p = .002. No statistically significant difference was found between Whites and non-Whites. Program characteristics-whether a 4-H program was science or citizen science-did have a significant relationship with both measures of retention (see Table 5), indicating that 4-H science programs have a higher probability of retaining members than 4-H citizen science programs.

Conclusions, Implications and Recommendations
The lack of literature on youth volunteer retention in citizen science projects inspired this exploration of the relationships between 4-H youth participants' volunteer motivation, Another key finding of this study is that emotional and cognitive engagement in the program are strongly correlated with retention.
The retention of non-White participants, coupled with the finding that girls have a higher reported intention to continue volunteering, is promising. Research shows that volunteering is associated with 27% higher odds of employment (Spera et al., 2013) and that African American and Hispanic workers remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce (Funk & Parker, 2018).
If 4-H and other youth science and citizen science programs can retain female and non-White participants, those youth may enter the STEM talent pipeline.

Implications for Practitioners
Youth educators can develop retention strategies based on the evidence from this study to recruit, involve, and recognize participants and plan meaningful programming that engages youth. Recruitment messages should appeal to the motivations (understanding and enhancement) found to be strongly correlated with predictors of retention. Phrases such as "learn something new," "a chance to use skills and abilities often unused," or "put skills to use" will appeal to individuals motivated to learn and improve skills (understanding). Individuals motivated to volunteer in order to boost self-esteem and feel needed (enhancement) may respond better to messaging that includes phrases such as "we need you" or "you are needed" to call for them to become involved in the program.
Contrary to expectations, this study found evidence of a relationship between only two of five dimensions of participation-consistency and engagement-and the predictors of retention. It is possible that these results are due to the fact that 4-H is a national organization with program standards based on best practices in youth development, and therefore the 4-H science and citizen science programs participating in this study did not differ in the other three participation variables: duration, intensity and dosage. Considering these findings, youth educators can examine how their program recognizes and rewards youth involvement. One possible strategy is for programs to recognize consistency of youth's participation instead of, or in addition to, the duration of participation in months and years or in volunteer hours. Also, youth educators should acknowledge and encourage youth when they demonstrate engagement in the program, for example, by expressing emotions such as interest and enjoyment or feelings of belonging (emotional engagement) or demonstrating a willingness to go beyond basic requirements to learn a skill (cognitive engagement) (Bohnert et al., 2010).

Suggestions for Future Research
The initial intention of this research was to study 4-H youth participating in citizen science projects. However, accessing this population proved difficult because (a) there was no centralized listing, (b) many 4-H agents and other practitioners were not familiar with the term "citizen science," and (c) some 4-H citizen science programs have their own evaluations and did not want to oversaturate the youth with surveys.
These barriers to research of youth participation in citizen science have been noted by other researchers. They may account for the limited literature about the impacts of citizen science participation for youth in both formal and informal settings. It highlights the need for such research to continue to be conducted despite the hardships of identifying and assessing youth participants.
In fact, the inability to access enough 4-H youth participating in citizen science to sustain this study created an opportunity for comparison between 4-H science and citizen science programming participants that led to one of this study's most important findings: 4-H science programs have a significantly higher likelihood of retaining participants than 4-H citizen science programs. One hypothesis for the difference in retention between the two groups may be that youth in 4-H science programs were more socially motivated than youth in 4-H citizen science programs (Del Bianco, 2018).
This research extends our limited empirical research on youth volunteer retention and adds to the growing body of knowledge of citizen science volunteer retention. In light of the evidence of a correlation between consistency and engagement previously described in Del Bianco (2018), the association of youth's consistency and engagement in participation and retention should be investigated. Engagement has been called the "missing link in organized activity research" (Bohnert et al., 2010) and is where future research and assessment should be focused.