Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Common House Use Proposal

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> Ah, good question. Data? Surely you jest.

The plural of anecdote is not data, to give you the famous quote.

> Just how would one go about gathering "data" on such a phenomenon?

Well, we have a big group of cohousing communities here, most of which
depend on (ongoing) volunteer labour for their existance. I think it would
be relatively easy to gather data on them starting from this email list,
should someone feel so inclined.

I'm going to assume the question is "Why do people do voluntary work
within their communities" or something similar. Please correct me if I'm
wrong.

A quick poke around the internet showed me a local journal that seems to
focus on the subject "Australian Journal on Volunteering" as well as a
bunch of papers on the subject. This paper looks at why, how and when
people volunteer (at a very high level):
http://www.thesmithfamily.com.au/webdata/resources/files/Briefing_Paper_4.pdf
There are more detailed investigations.

Off the top of my head I've read papers in psychology, economics, game
theory, sociology and electric engineering on the topic. They all have
interesting takes on what is a pretty fundamental part of society.

What's interesting for me is the micro version of this that applies within
a small community like a cohousing setup. Especially since the group I'm
in continues to struggle to get people to volunteer (and we're still in
the wishin'n'hopin stage).

Moz