Opportunities for personal development
The potentials of peer volunteering
Purposeful behaviour. Volunteers illustrated identified regulation for providing peer
support where they described gaining a sense of purpose through their roles, “It gives me
purpose, erm it gives me potentially new skills and it gives me all the social stuff as well”
(Midlands, phone interview). Greater emphasis was placed on the importance of helping
others and their volunteering role was more important to them than a wage from a paid role
further emphasising the value they placed on what they gained from the role. The volunteers
were not looking to seek extrinsic rewards but sought the personal benefits which is linked to
more autonomous motivation (Haivas et al., 2013),
With volunteering you do it to get something out of it, whatever that may be, that’s
what you do it for. I mean it could be anything it’s like you can do it just to see people
grow, you can do it because you want to do courses or get skills, whereas in the
workplace you’re thinking right, I’m just coming to work to earn money that’s going
to pay the bills (North West, focus group).
Our findings suggest that those volunteers who valued their volunteering role were
committed to the role and demonstrated autonomous motivation to delivering peer support.
Individuals who are intrinsically motivated to engage in volunteering independent of any
external rewards find this behaviour inherently interesting and enjoyable, and place value on
what they can achieve through volunteering (Haivas, Hofmans, & Pepermans, 2012). The
social connections made during volunteering might compensate for the lack of financial
rewards by providing an alternative return of investment for the volunteer (Vantilborgh et al.,
2012).
Trusting one’s judgement. Peer volunteers reported that they were increasingly
likely to trust their own judgements when facilitating PA sessions portraying enhanced
perceptions of competence, “Well I’ve experienced that in a roundabout way and I know
what’s worked for me and helped me and you know in that situation I think I just kind of
applied my own experience really more than anything” (London, phone interview).
Volunteers felt better able to judge the level of peer support required and felt increasingly
confident in using prior knowledge and experience to deliver tailored peer support based on
the specific situation and the needs of the MHSU.
SDT’s central argument is that an environment which satisfies these three basic
psychological needs foster growth, personal development and wellbeing of individuals (Deci
& Ryan, 2000). Research within healthcare organisations found that when volunteers
experienced group inclusion, this satisfied their need for relatedness (they felt they belonged),
need for competence (they felt their unique contributions were valued by MHSU) and need
for autonomy (felt in control of their own actions) (Bidee et al., 2017). Adding to this
research, volunteers within a community PA programme appeared to be more convinced of
the efficacy of their personal efforts when MHSU valued them as individuals, which led to
them experiencing more latitude for controlling their own tasks and behaviour within the role,
“My thinking and taking life and approaching others and understanding the community and
society, and the people, it’s totally changed” (Midlands, focus group). This further led to
them trusting in their ability to make the relevant decisions within the volunteering role.
Previous research with a sample of Romanian volunteers within a work context found
that the more volunteers were satisfied with their freedom of choice and perceived
themselves as being the source of their own volunteering behaviour (i.e., experiencing high
autonomy), the more volunteers indicated being engaged in volunteering (Haivas et al.,
2013). The current findings add to this research by demonstrating that when a sample of UK
volunteers within the context of a community PA programme experienced autonomy over
their volunteering role, they were able to develop personal skills such as learning to trust their
own judgements and improved decision making. As a result, volunteers are less likely to
show intentions to quit their role of delivering peer support to MHSU. This is an interesting
finding as volunteers already chose to engage in their volunteering behaviour out of free will;
however, individuals may still vary in how they can satisfy their need for autonomy once
performing their volunteering role (Haivas et al., 2013). For example, in the actual tasks and
duties which they become responsible for, as well as the amount of sessions volunteers are
delivering, may influence their engagement in peer volunteering, “I got more and more, so
now, that’s why I’m running like, I’ve got a gym session I’m running at the moment as well
every Monday and Friday, then I run Tuesday soccer session as well, then I do badminton
session on Monday as well and the walking group on Friday” (North East, focus group).
Peer volunteers were further driven by constructive positive feedback from MHSU
regarding the success of PA sessions. The positive feedback facilitated competence and
helped the peer volunteers develop tools and coping strategies to better manage unexpected
situations, “I didn’t get that at first but until being presented with this situation, it was like oh
right, and upon taking a deep breath, I had the tools to be able to deal with that, you know”
(North East, focus group).
The pitfalls of peer volunteering
Establishing boundaries. Volunteers sometimes experienced difficulties in
establishing boundaries with the MHSU, “And you know, it’s easy to cross that line even a
little bit you know and delve into things you shouldn’t be telling them or speaking to them
about” (North West, phone interview). Individuals found it difficult to retain feelings of
competence within their role when participants divulged serious information relating to their
mental health. Volunteers described how they would feel unsure of the most suitable response
or steps to tackle the situation and thus questioned their abilities to deal with the scenario,
particularly if the information was destressing. However, the peer volunteers felt that their
lived experience of mental health problems and more time spent dealing with challenges
could increase their ability to establish appropriate boundaries,
You’ve got to figure out yourself that obviously you’re in a group all the time, you
know who’s a person, who’s a difficult person to approach and who’s a person who’s
really ready to meet you halfway, who really needs your help and they do appreciate
as well (North West, focus group).
A literature review which explored peer workers’ perceptions and experiences of
barriers to implementation of roles reported conflicts concerning the use of lived experiences
with mental health problems in establishing those roles (Vandewalle et al., 2016). Peer
workers were often informed by health professionals to restrict disclosing lived experience in
order to maintain their personal wellbeing (Holley, Gillard, & Gibson, 2015). However, peer
workers felt that this restriction on boundaries could cause impersonal engagement with
others which reduced the meaningful nature of peer support (Gillard et al., 2015). When peer
worker roles were implemented within a culture of shared values of recovery and peer
support, peer workers were given the opportunity to develop a distinctive contribution based
on lived experience (Gillard et al., 2015). The current study findings further this literature
with peer workers by supporting the importance of lived experience when establishing
boundaries within peer volunteers’ roles. When peer volunteers used their lived experience to
establish boundaries between themselves and MHSU, their effectiveness within the role
delivery increased, further demonstrating enhanced competence. However, establishing
boundaries was a difficult process experienced by the volunteers and often resulted in
negative implications. The challenges of utilising lived experience to set boundaries within
the volunteering role adds to this literature.
Support network for peer volunteers. Peer volunteers generally detailed the
successful network of support from both the programme deliverer, and regular contact with
fellow peer volunteers from the different programme delivery sites. This was important for
enhancing volunteers’ personal development through mutual support provided between peer
volunteers. However, this was not the case for all peer volunteers,
I don’t really know how many [peer volunteers] exist. I think it would be better if,
every now and then we did have some sort of meeting, just to find out what’s going
on, and to meet new volunteers and stuff because sometimes people just leave and
you don’t know what’s going on and then someone new will start and you don’t know
who they are or what sessions they’re doing (London, focus group)
In line with SDT, having a source of support that facilitates need satisfaction is also important
for the volunteers (Duda et al., 2014). However, this scenario demonstrates that a lack of a
source of support, either from a fellow peer volunteer or from an individual in charge of
overseeing the PA programme, can lead to an absence of relatedness need satisfaction.
Volunteers portrayed feelings of despondency when there was a lack of change in the support
available to them. Existing literature has highlighted the importance of having a support
network for peer volunteers (Davidson et al., 2012). Detrimental effects to volunteers’
mental health and feelings of internalised pressure were alleviated when they felt comfort in
knowing that programme support staff could take responsibility of issues arising,
Whatever issue, as she said to us, “that whatever issue you guys have, any emergency
in a group, anything like serious like which obviously you cannot handle alone or you,
it’s not your place to do that so you can always, give me a call” (North West, focus
group).
Strengths and limitations
A strength of the current study is that the research investigated an area of research
that has not yet received much attention; peer volunteering from the perspective of the
volunteers, within a community-based PA programme for MHSU. The inclusion of focus
groups allowed for rich, in-depth information to be collected relating to peer volunteers’
personal experiences, opinions and reasons for volunteering. The nature of focus groups
actively facilitates discussion around a specific interview question and others within the room
are able to provide mutual support in expressing feelings common to the group as a whole, or
offer contracting viewpoints via the exchange of stories (Kitzinger, 1995). The researchers
aimed to create a relaxed atmosphere for the participants to encourage honest discussion. The
environment generated discussion within a safe, familiar and supportive space within the
volunteers’ local Mind, inhibiting stigmatisation which volunteers may have experienced
from the wider society. The purposive sampling and homogenous sample of similar
individuals increased the quality of data collected (Smith & McGannon, 2018). However, this
also means that the findings cannot necessarily be applied to contexts outside of the
participant sample (e.g., volunteers who had ceased their roles).
Despite this study’s strengths, there are limitations to consider. Focus groups are a
useful method of data collection to gather information from participants in a permissive and
non-threatening environment (Freeman, 2006). However, participants may have responded
with social desirability bias and demand characteristics because they were in the presence of
others, including the researchers. Researchers made it clear they were independent to the PA
programme being discussed and therefore participants were asked to speak as openly and
honestly as possible. The presence of other research participants compromises the
confidentiality of the research setting. Articulation of group norms may silence individuals’
voices of dissent (Halcomb, Gholizadeh, DiGiacomo, Phillips, & Davidson, 2007) and
dominant group members may have led to output bias. However, the researcher ensured that
across all focus groups each individual volunteer was able to vocalise their thoughts, feelings
and perceptions at some point during the focus group as best they could. Despite pre-empting
and therefore over-recruiting, there were several participants who dropped out on the day
scheduled for the focus group which reduced the overall numbers involved in data collection.
It is important to remember that the population group being explored had lived experience of
mental health problems and their unpredictability could be a result of their illness symptoms.
Existing research has focused on the positive aspects of peer volunteering and often
negated to discuss any negative features. Individuals who did not have a positive experience
of volunteering were more likely to withdraw from their roles, and their feedback may not
have been captured in the study findings (Charlesworth et al., 2017). However, the pitfalls of
volunteering were still discussed allowing for an important addition to the existing literature.
Additionally, it is reasonable to suggest that the participants who volunteered for the focus
groups were volunteers who were more invested in their roles and had a better quality of
motivation than those who did not volunteer. Whilst some might argue that this could create
self-selection bias which further limits generalisability (Charlesworth et al., 2017), self-
selection with regards to the current study could represent an integral feature of exploring
volunteering experiences of peer support. For example, through self-selection, a more
representative sample of peer volunteers may have participated in the study, demonstrating a
broader range of behavioural regulations and quality of motivation across the study.
Conclusion
Exploring motivation of volunteering behaviour can inform peer support
services, and expand our understanding, of the broader role of helping behaviours
within PA programmes for MHSU (Firmin et al., 2015). Positive experiences of
reciprocity through volunteering resulted in basic psychological need satisfaction,
particularly competence and relatedness, and improved mental health of volunteers.
Specifically, feelings of connectedness to other MHSU facilitated relatedness need
satisfaction through peer support mutuality, and consequently influenced
autonomous motives towards sustained volunteering. Giving to others can provide
individuals with a purpose which appeared to facilitate autonomous motivation to
volunteer, specifically through identified regulation. However, it is important to
ensure that support is in place for peer volunteers to mitigate the negative impact that
internalised pressure of peer volunteering can have on their quality of motivation,
need satisfaction, and psychological wellbeing. It is important for programme
implementors to identify the pitfalls of volunteering to better understand how to
improve the retention of peer volunteers and improve the experience of volunteers.
For example, ensuring that peer volunteers receive the relevant supervision from an
individual in charge of the programme delivery, regular contact with other volunteers
and are offered training prior to starting their volunteering role. Further, those
designing PA programmes for MHSU including a peer support element should aim to
facilitate volunteers’ basic psychological needs through positive experiences of
reciprocity, enhanced feelings of competence and opportunities for personal
development. It is also necessary to support volunteers’ personal mental health and
encourage autonomous motivation leading to sustained peer volunteering.
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