Publication details
Interests of Social Workers as Motives for Policy Engagement
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | In this paper, I answer the question "Do social workers have interests that could motivate them in policy engagement?" Inspired by value theory, I understand social worker interest as the feeling of wanting to adjust the conditions of social work to be in harmony with the values committed by social workers. In addition to interests, the conceptualization of values is needed; values are defined as the importance of aspects of the perceived social work reality for social workers. The presented study consists of the initial qualitative inquiry (n=16), striving to understand the values and interests of social workers and followed by quantitative analysis (n=729) scrutinizing the distribution of the revealed values and interests among social workers in the Czech Republic. Data originated from a broader study on professional competencies and personal prerequisites necessary for the performance of social work that I held in collaboration with colleagues from the Research Institute for Labor and Social Affairs in 2019. The qualitative inquiry uncovers the vagueness of values and the importance of value contexts that give a particular group of values their exact meaning. I have distinguished four value contexts: Personal satisfaction, Help to others, Organizational development, and Direct work with clients. Regarding their interests, the interviewed social workers expressed wanting to adjust the conditions of social work in connection with the service, the employer, the profession, and the significant others. At the beginning of the quantitative analysis, the unimportance of the value context of the Organizational development to respondents was discovered, thus eliminated from further study. The quantitative analysis was done in two steps. First, factor analysis was used to discover the distribution of values in the value contexts among respondents. Second, the analysis of associations between statements was used to indicate different interests in a given value context. Even though some respondents have a significant focus on their clients, on themselves, and on helping others in general, they express wanting to adjust the conditions in social work education, the management of organizations, collaboration with other professionals, subsidization of social services, and institutional systems. The results suggest that respondents articulate a range of interests that can be seen as latent motives for their potential policy engagement in the future. |