Professional preferences of social workers: prestige scales of populations, services and methods in social work

Professional commitment among graduating BSW students in Israel

“…Job satisfaction, on the other hand, is an important component of commitment. This finding, documented by Aviram and Katan (1991), was confirmed here.…”

“…If the commitment to the social profession per se is not a powerful one, the graduate who, for whatever reason, is unable to find social work employment consistent with his or her preferences (for method, agency or client population), is likely to seek employment outside the profession. In a later article, based on the 75 percent of their earlier respondents who were working in social work two and a half years after graduation, Aviram and Katan (1991) found considerable unexplained variance in professional commitment at that stage of their subjects' careers and suggested further research into this issue. They left open the question of what variables impact commitment to social work.…”

Political Practica: Educating Social Work Students for Policymaking

“…Other studies (Aviram & Katan, 1991;Rubin & Johnson, 1984) indicate that more incoming social work students are interested in providing direct practice counseling-and, in many cases, private practice counseling to socially prestigious clientsthan in any other practice specialty. Conversely, relatively few students express interest in working with the poor and/or other disenfranchised groups.…”

What kind of social policy do social work students prefer?

“…Forms of activities aimed at achieving social change, be they legislative advocacy, reform through litigation, social action or social policy analysis, are not a signi®cant part of the repertoire of most social workers in the USA, the UK and Israel (Figueira-McDonough, 1993;Payne, 1997;Spiro et al, 1997). Rather, most social workers engage in casework or direct practice, which focuses upon providing personal assistance to individuals or families, in order to better cope with the challenges they face in the existing environment (Aviram and Katan, 1991;Payne, 1997;Reeser and Epstein, 1987). Nor do most schools of social work provide their students with either suf®cient knowledge or professional tools with which to undertake this type of activity (Specht and Courtney, 1994).…”