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theses

This study explored the experiences of a small group of Israeli volunteers who responded to a short-term armed conflict affecting civilians. The participants were volunteers during the Second Lebanon War in northern Israel in the summer of 2006. Community-based crises are typically marked by many civilians offering to volunteer in order to meet emerging community needs. The research on community-related crisis intervention tends to focus primarily on first responders and often overlooks other types of volunteers who take part in responding to crises. Additionally, the current literature addresses volunteers’ participation in certain types of crises such as the events of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina. Less is known about volunteers who respond to an ongoing community-crisis caused by an armed conflict. The participants were interviewed two years later about their experiences during the armed conflict. The interview narratives were analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. The primary themes that arose from these participants’ narratives suggested that volunteers’ experiences are rich and complex with several factors forming them. These factors, which are associated with and reflect the main ideas of the themes were incorporated into two core categories named “protective and risk factors in volunteers’ experience”. These categories were further divided into three domains: “the individual”, “the work”, and “the context”, with each domain containing its own protective and risk factors. This suggested framework reflects the idea that individuals who volunteer during a war are affected by both their interactions with the community they serve and the leadership’s style of handling the crisis. Some of the protective and risk factors identified in this study reflect familiar themes in the larger context of the literature on crisis intervention while others are less developed and require further study particularly in the specific context of volunteers responding to a crisis situation. This framework should prove useful for testing individual hypotheses in future studies, for designing quantitative studies to help determine the importance of the different factors and how they interact, and for designing and implementing protective measures that can assist volunteers and contribute to a positive outcome for their experience, and for those they serve.

ETD_3693

Psy.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Naama Nebenzahl

http://hdl.rutgers.edu/1782.1/rucore10001800001.ETD.000063957

doi:10.7282/T3VD6XH5

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.

1754624

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ETD

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1761280

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