Volunteering in a Complexity-driven Perspective. Methodological and Substantial Lessons for a New Research Agenda

The final chapter of the volume presents the lessons learned in the Italian process of the implementation of the international standards on volunteering in official statistics. The focus is on both methodological and substantial questions, useful to readers interested in volunteering on the global level. We first summarize the findings about the methodological aspects, thus providing guidance for survey designers. We then illustrate the substantial progresses made on several topics of volunteering studies – characteristics, antecedents, motivations, and impacts. Finally, we identify challenges for the future research agenda that derive from this body of knowledge, by tackling issues about data production, elaboration, and use. Results show that the implementation of the international standards for measuring volunteering offers unprecedented opportunities of learning for scholars, statisticians, practitioners, and policy-makers.