Prosocial Activities

The Prosocial Activities measure (Caprara, G.V., Steca, P., Zelli, A., & Capanna, C. (2005)) was developed to gauge a subject’s involvement in activities outside of work or school. There are 17 items on the measure concerning religious activity, a subject’s involvement in non-religious activities, and civic volunteer participation.

Abstract: The Prosocial Activities measure was developed to gauge a subject’s involvement in activities outside of work or school. There are 17 items on the measure. The first three questions concern religious activity, items 4 through 8 concern a subject’s involvement in non-religious activities such as a social club or organized sports, items 9 through 15 gauge civic volunteer participation (i.e. membership in a political, environmental, or human rights organization). Subjects may choose from a scale where 1 = never, 2 = once in the past year, 3 = a few times in the past year, 4 = monthly, 5 = weekly, and 6 = daily. Item 16, “are you registered to vote,” has two response options: yes and no. Item 17, “how often have you voted in an election,” has 5 response options: never, once, twice, 3-4 times, and more than 4 times. There is a skip pattern noted for items 16 and 17. Four scales were created for this measure. Scales were created by taking the mean for each set of variables for a given scale. The first scale, Church Participation, contains items 1 through 3. Non-religious Participation, another scale, contains items 4 through 8. The Civic Volunteer Participation Scale includes items 9 through 15. Finally, a Total Social Participation scale was created to include all of items 1 through 15. Cronbach alphas for all of the scales showed a high level of reliability. The scales exhibit a high degree of reliability in measuring whether a subject is involved in activities outside of school or work. Two scales were slightly skewed in a positive direction: Church Participation and Total Social Participation. The Civic Volunteer Participation Scale was more strongly skewed in a positive direction.

Who Completed this Measure?: select one

Cohort 1 - Administrative History

  • Year 15 | age 20

Cohort 2 - Administrative History

  • Year 15 | age 20

Cohort 3 - Administrative History

  • Year 15 | age 20

Technical Reports:

Raw Dataset Name: CxBS

Scored Dataset Name: PSAySCc

Keywords:
Church Participation, Civic Volunteer, Environmental Organization, Human Rights Organization, Non-Religious Participation, Political Organization, Religious Activities,

Is this Measure Available for Public Use?: No

Obtain Measure:

G.V. Caprara
Professor of Personality Psychology
Dean of the 2nd Faculty of Psychology
Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Email: gianvittorio.caprara@uniroma1.it