Contemporary developments in social attitudes toward prostitution and prostitutes influence both social policies and the social work profession. Understanding individuals’ attitudes toward these issues is necessary for the development of social interventions and policies aimed at reducing stigmata attached to them. This article describes a new research measure for the assessment of attitudes toward prostitutes and prostitution (the Attitudes toward Prostitutes and Prostitution Scale; APPS), and outlines its development process. Results from pilot studies using the APPS are presented, alongside detailed information regarding the measure’s psychometric properties. The article concludes with a review of possible uses and limitations of the APPS.

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This article aims to enrich the current limited body of knowledge regarding social work professional discourse. More specifically, it seeks to examine the extent and ways in which the social work intra-profession discourse, as it is manifested in formal job descriptions of social workers in Israel, reflects the commitment to working with people living in poverty and to confronting poverty. We provide a brief review of the concept of professional discourse and the role of formal job descriptions in this discourse in general, and in Israel in particular. ‘Poverty-aware social work’ is then conceptualised. Against this background, we analysed 75 job descriptions in order to ascertain whether, and in what ways, references to poverty appear in defining client populations, in directions for assessing their situation, and in defining the goals and methods of professional intervention. The research findings reflect a textual silence in relation to poverty issues in job descriptions. The analysis of poverty-related sub-topics in these documents suggests that job descriptions offer, and simultaneously reproduce a conservative and a-political perspective on poverty and on social work practice with people living in poverty.

Professional identity is one of numerous kinds of identities people can possess throughout their lives, including personal, family, community and workplace identities (Wiles, 2013). Created in the space between individual beliefs and motives, and job-related attributes and experiences, professional identities are considered an important mechanism that affects professionals' attitudes, feelings and behaviours when performing their job (Caza & Creary, 2016). In social work, professional identity is described as an essential component of professional development (Levy, Shlomo, & Itzhaky, 2014). Professional identity may change and evolve during a professional's career, as a result of the broadening exposure to professional knowledge, educational as well as on-the-job socialisation, and the continuous encounter with other professionals and insights derived from dealing with professional dilemmas (Freund, Cohen, Blit-Cohen, & Dehan, 2017). | Defining professional identityDespite, or perhaps as a consequence, of the diverse scope of influences attributed to professional identity and its dynamic nature, the