Motives for undertaking studies by future social workers in the context of their sense of co-herence

Abstract

Contemporary times, marked by instability, unpredictability and uncertainty, make it very dif-ficult for young people to make decisions related to their future professional career. Choices regarding undertaking studies in a specific field are not always made on the basis of self-reflection on one's own potentials, needs or the situation on the labour market. The aim of the research was to characterise the motives which led young adults to study social work and to determine differences between individual types of educational motivation and the sense of coherence of the students surveyed. The research was conducted in 2019–2020 and involved 190 students of social work. The method of the study was a diagnostic survey, and the tool was a self-constructed questionnaire and the Life Orientation Questionnaire (SOC-29) by A. Antonovsky. Diagnosis of the motives for undertaking studies in the field of social work al-lowed us to state that the most numerous group of the surveyed students, while choosing their field of studies, was guided by motives having their source in external factors. Coincidence was also quite often mentioned as the motive for the choice. The conducted research shows that the surveyed students have a relatively low sense of coherence. Moreover, it was found that one of the components of the sense of coherence, i.e. the sense of meaningfulness, signif-icantly differentiated the respondents who were guided by internal motives when choosing their field of studies and those who seemed to rely on chance in this matter. The conducted analyses allowed for the formulation of recommendations for people organising the educa-tional process, thanks to which it would be possible to strengthen the resources of students in the field of social work, so that in the future they could better cope with the burdens resulting from their professional work.