ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sociol.
Sec. Work, Employment and Organizations
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsoc.2025.1636370
This article is part of the Research TopicUniversity Education for Sustainable Development: Challenges and OpportunitiesView all 9 articles
A Specialized Training Program Enhances University Students' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices on Volunteering: Evidence from Oman
Provisionally accepted
Emad Farouk Saleh1
Wafa Said Al-Maamari1
Ahmed Thabet Helal Ibrahim1Magdy M Mostafa1P Padma1
E P Abdul Azeez2*- 1Sultan Qaboos University, Seeb, Oman
- 2School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
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The decreasing involvement of youth in voluntary practices necessitates training and mobilizing them for voluntary activities. Therefore, the present study aimed to develop and test the efficacy of a culture-sensitive training program on enhancing knowledge, attitude, and practice (KAP) of volunteering among university students in Oman. We adopted a quasiexperimental design with a pre-post-test on the KAP of volunteering and designed a specialized training program spanning 10 weeks. Training was given to two groups of university students independently during different semesters to test the efficacy of the program (group 1 and group 2). The results of the paired t-test suggested a significant difference in knowledge, attitude, practice, and overall KAP [group 1: t (29) = 15.73, p<0.01; group 2: t (59) = 8.77, p<0.01] pre-post-tests in both groups, pointing to the good efficacy of the program. Cohen's d indicates a significant effect size for the KAP of volunteering in both groups. The results emphasize the relevance of mobilizing students for volunteering by enhancing their awareness and practice of volunteering. We recommend adding this training program as part of extra-curricular activities in academic institutions across Oman and similar contexts. Facilitating voluntarism among university students has implications for contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through education for sustainable development efforts envisaged in targets 4.7 and 17.7.
Keywords: volunteering, Awareness, Oman, knowledge, Attitude and practice, training program
Received: 27 May 2025; Accepted: 24 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Farouk Saleh, Al-Maamari, Ibrahim, Mostafa, Padma and Abdul Azeez. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: E P Abdul Azeez, School of Social Sciences and Languages, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore, India
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