Volunteers Motives in Relation to their Task Preference in Health Service Delivery: A Case of West Kenya

Background: According to the World Health Organization (WHO), human resources is the key ingredient to the effective functioning of health systems. The growing human resource crisis in low-income countries has re-energized the debate concerning the role of community health volunteers in health service delivery. Researchers have studied task-shifting among community volunteers focusing on its impact on health outcomes. This study focused on how task preference could be related to volunteer motives in an African setting. Methods: We carried out a cross-sectional survey with the aim to investigate the relationship between motives and task preference among health volunteers compared with non-volunteers matched by gender, residence, and education in Western Kenya. The eight motives that were taken into account in the present study were obtained from existing literature, and tasks were derived from the common health activities undertaken by volunteers in Kenya. We recorded the preference of 1062 respondents for each of the tasks on a 1-5 Likert scale. The task preference among volunteers on the basis of motives and the status of the volunteers were compared. Results: Long-term health tasks such as mother and child healthcare, home visiting and curative care were significantly more associated with altruistic than with material gain motives (p=0.00). Short-term tasks such as helping in disease outbreaks, and participation in immunization campaigns were associated with both altruistic and material gain motives. The self-seeking motives tend to be associated only with short-term tasks. Conclusion: The preference for long-term health tasks was associated with non self-seeking motives; while short-term tasks were associated with both non self-seeking and self-seeking motives. It was concluded that the assessment of the motives of the volunteers was critical in assigning tasks to volunteers.