Chapter 9: Service and Motivation to Serve: An Exploration and Model

Using data from Eyler and Giles (1999), this chapter presents a preliminary measure of students’ intrinsic motivation to perform community service. This measure is used in a structural equation model to explore whether students’ intrinsic motivation is negatively affected by participating in a service-learning course, as cognitive evaluation theory predicts it could be. The results of this analysis suggest that students’ intrinsic motivation to serve is not negatively influenced by service-learning. The chapter ends with possible directions for future research concerning intrinsic motivation and its relationship to service-learning.