Bridging the Gap: Understanding Students' Volunteerism Preferences and Barriers Using Text Mining Analysis

Student volunteerism is an activity that enhances the sense of social responsibility of the students. It aims to develop their act of service in society that will benefit later on towards their professional development in terms of leadership, communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills. This study aims to explore the factors that motivate students to engage in volunteer activities in the university and those that prevent them from participating. Understanding these factors can enhance participation rates among students. For university, this may help them design community work that aligns with the motivating drive of students to participate in such activities. The study used survey questionnaire to extract data from the respondents then used text miming analysis to determine relationships between extracted data. This study also utilized Rapid Miner to clean, analyze and visualize the student responses. The study showed that 56 students or 69% of the respondents have not engaged in any volunteerism activity in school or in their community, while 25 or 31% of the respondents had participated in a volunteerism activity this implies that there is a gap in participation rates suggesting that there is an opportunity to encourage and promote student volunteerism. The Word Cloud used in the study highlighted positive words that indicates positive emotional and social impact of engaging in volunteer work. The study suggests that universities can promote student volunteerism if they include it in students’ academic schedule, offering credit-based community service programs, and enhancing awareness campaigns