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              A Systematic Review of Senior Corps’ Impact on Volunteers and Program Beneficiaries
      Back
                The Senior Corps Program, administered by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS), engages adults 55 years and older in national service that provides benefits both to local communities and to the volunteers themselves. This report describes the history and goals of the three Senior Corps programs and reviews the literature on the effectiveness of these programs to:

identify the strength of the evidence base for Senior Corps
	contextualize these findings within the larger literature on the impact of volunteering for older adults
	offer recommendations and lessons learned from this review**Study Goals**:

The goal of this report was to systematically review the evaluation literature on three Senior Corps programs from 1980 to 2019 to determine what the academic literature and research realizes about the impact of Senior Corps on those who volunteer in its programs and on those served by Senior Corps volunteers.



**Research Questions:**

The research questions were:

What is the strength of the evidence base for Senior Corps?

	What is the impact of Senior Corps service on volunteers and beneficiaries?
		What is the effectiveness of specific Senior Corps service models or interventions?
	How do findings from the research on volunteering among older adults generally compare to the findings from research about Senior Corps specifically?
	What are the learnings, best practices and key resources that can inform the work of CNCS, its grantees, and other stakeholder groups?**Findings:**

The evaluation found the following:

Findings show a positive impact of Senior Corps participation (75% of the outcomes studied having positive results) on both volunteers and beneficiaries.
	The majority of the evaluations reviewed examined psychosocial and physical health outcomes; consequently, the majority of the positive outcomes observed for volunteers are in these two domains.
	The majority of these positive findings (78%) are from non-experimental designs, and most did not directly test for statistical significance, so more rigorous evaluation will help address selection bias and further strengthen the evidence base.For more information, download the full report.

      Full report
      

      Full Report
            2019-09-09-Senior-Corps-Research-Review-Synthesis-Report _to CNCS_508.pdf
                  Senior-Corps-Meta-Analysis-Feasibility-Memo-7-31-2019 _508.pdf
                  Senior Corps-Recommendation-07-31-2019 _508.pdf
                  2019.07.18 Senior Corps Timeline_REVISED_clean09082020_508.pdf
                  Senior Corps RRS Annotated Bib_21Sept2020_508.pdf
        Further information
    



      Program/Intervention
                        Best Practice Dissemination, Senior Corps Program
  

      Implementing Organization
                        CNCS Office of Research and Evaluation Commissioned Report
  

      AmeriCorps Program(s)
            AmeriCorps Seniors
  

      Age(s) Studied
            55+ (Older adult)
  

      Focus Population(s)/Community(s)
            Rural
                  Suburban
                  Urban
  

      Outcome Category
            Aging in place
                  Benefit to national service members/volunteers
                  Nonprofit development
                  Improving AmeriCorps
  

      Researcher/Evaluator
                        JBS International
  

      Published Year
                        2019 Back to main content Sign up to hear about our latest news, events, and opportunities.
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