The ILO Manual on the Measurement of Volunteer Work

 
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This new Manual, drafted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies in cooperation with the ILO and an international Technical Experts Group, represents the first-ever internationally sanctioned approach for gathering official data on the amount, character, and contribution of volunteering. This approach will generate cross-nationally comparable data, including the number of volunteers, and has the advantage of being cost-effective, efficient, reliable, and feasible in a wide variety of countries.
 

Advantages of the ILO Manual.
The ILO Manual has been carefully designed to be:
 

Comparable. The ILO Manual provides a common approach to data collection, definitions, key concepts, classification, and variables that will allow comparison between counties and over time.

Feasible. The ILO Manual is designed and tested to be workable in the widest possible range of countries, minimally burdensome to implement, and sensitive to cultural traditions and language differences.

Cost-effective. The ILO Manual utilizes existing household surveys, thereby reducing costs and taking advantage of existing classification systems and structures.

Efficient. The ILO Manual is designed to maximize the information gathered using the minimum number of questions.

Reliable. All aspects of the ILO Manual are based on extensive input from an international Technical Experts Group, and careful field testing of key terms and design decisions.