Service to the Nation: Prospective Participants’ Engagement With National Service in Ghana

The engagement of participants in mandatory national youth service programs is a potentially important, but often neglected factor in understanding why these programs do or do not achieve their intended outcomes. This study examines the engagement of prospective participants in national service by testing competing theoretical frameworks on motivations for volunteering. Specifically, we examine motivational, institutional, and group identity theories and apply them to a mandatory national service program in a non-Western context: Ghana’s National Service Scheme (NSS). We analyze data from an online survey among almost 3,000 university students who are prospective NSS participants. Results indicate that the motivational perspective is very useful to understand engagement in mandatory community service in developing countries. In addition, the institutional and group identity perspectives are found to be complementary to this motivational perspective