Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 8:00 AM

This presentation is part of: Social Work Education and Practice

A Psychometric Analysis of the Social Work Self-Efficacy Scale

Purpose

Evaluation of educational outcomes of masters level social work programs is required for accreditation by the Council on Social Work Education, yet few reliable and valid measures exist for this purpose (Floyd & Garcia, 2002). The lack of a standardized outcome measure leaves us with no psychometrically sound criterion for assessing competence of graduating students or comparing outcomes across programs.

To address this need Holden and colleagues (2002) developed the Social Work Self Efficacy Scale (SWSES), a broadband self-report measure of social work practice skills at both the foundation and advanced levels of education. To be considered a valid measure the SWSES needs to have construct validity, and it should be able to discriminate known groups of students, specifically, entering students with BSW degrees and/or prior practice experience from those without. Although Holden and colleagues have conducted pre/posttest comparisons of the SWSES, our study is the first to report a factor analysis of the SWSES.

Method

All students entering a Midwestern masters level social work program in the fall of 2002 (n=51 advanced standing students, n=70 non-advanced students) were asked to complete the SWSES along with brief demographic data. Discriminate validity of the SWSES was assessed using factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) with BSW degree and prior social work experience as the predictors. Construct validity of the SWSES was assessed using principal components factor analysis with oblique rotation.

Results

The factor analysis yielded five components based on 40 of the original 52 SWSES items and accounted for 81% of total variance. We discarded the fifth component because it consisted of only 2 items and it was not conceptually related to social work practice skills. We labeled the remaining 4 factors: (1) therapeutic skills, (2) case management skills, (3) supportive skills, and (4) self-awareness. The revised scale and component subscales had excellent internal consistency (alphas >.89).

ANOVA revealed both BSW degree and social work experience were significant predictors of revised SWSES scores (p<.01), explaining 37% of the variance. Students with the BSW degree and students with 3 or more years of experience scored significantly higher on the revised SWSES and on each of the four subscales, except experience was not a significant predictor of self-awareness. There were no significant interaction effects.

Implications

Our factor analytic findings are consistent with the factor structure of the Practice Skills Inventory developed by O’Hare & Collins (1997), on which the SWSES was heavily based, lending support for the construct validity of the SWSES. Our findings showing the SWSES can discriminate known groups (BSW degree, social work experience) suggest the SWSES may have utility as a measure of social work practice skills. Clearly, more work needs to be done to establish the validity of the SWSES as a suitable broadband measure of social work practice skills. Limitations in the study sample, the content of the SWSES, and the self-report format impose important caveats on our conclusions. Nevertheless, we believe the SWSES shows promise as one tool for assessing outcomes of graduate social work programs

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