Study title

Volunteering is seen as an effective way to address a wide range of issues that are present in modern societies, in particular in rural areas. In order to gain insight into the current state of volunteering, a survey was carried out with the aim of providing an inventory of the digitalisation of volunteering and addressing the influence of spatiality in this context. This article examines the traditional data collection methods of surveys that have been used in the past to collect information on volunteering and presents a different sampling procedure based on a random sample of municipalities, due to insufficient data available from official authorities. Finally, the article discusses the results of the survey and analyses how the unique sampling procedure differs from previous approaches. The comparison with a larger survey shows that the different sampling methods produce largely identical results, at least for the central variable of organisational area. As long as no structured data are available from the public authorities, there will always be a trade-off with regard to sampling strategies and the method of contact when doing research on volunteering organisations.