Saturday, 15 January 2005 - 12:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Case Assignment as a Factor in Workers’ Exposure to Client Violence: A Pilot Study

Purpose: Workers’ gender and clients’ history of violent behaviors are documented as major risk factors in professional social workers’ exposure to client-related violence in the workplace. The Bureau of Labor Statistics and recent studies find that male social workers are at greater risk of not only non-fatal assaults, but also of homicides than their female counterparts. While the overrepresentation of males in high-risk (i.e., more violent) practice settings (i.e., correction, substance abuse) explains some of this variance, no other risk factors are empirically documented. Since it is widely held that aggression and gender influences task assignments in the workplace, the manner by which workers are assigned tasks may be an alternate factor that heightens their exposure to client-related violence. To address this gap, a pilot study was developed to test a series of hypotheses around how client’s gender and history of violent behavior affect supervisors’ case assignment decision toward male social workers. This study investigates two main questions: (1) does a client’s history of violence influence supervisor’s to assign these cases toward male practitioners? and (2) what client characteristics (e.g., age, gender, diagnosis) influence increase case assignment toward male practitioners?

Method: An anonymous questionnaire was sent to 85 social workers selected from a list of field placement supervisors at a major research university in the northeast, who identified mental health and substance abuse as their practice setting. An experimental case vignette design was used whereby the respondents were given four hypothetical client cases: an adult male with a schizophrenia disorder, an adult female with bi-polar disorder, an adolescent male with a conduct disorder, and an adolescent female with a depressive disorder. The respondents were randomly assigned to receive client vignettes with either a history of violence or non-violence. From this total mailing, a 33% (N=26) response rate was achieved, whereas almost an equal number of returns were observed. The data were examined using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) procedures.

Results: These findings suggest a significant main effect (F (3, 22) =3.23, (p <.028) of clients’ history of violence. As predicted, adult clients (male & female) with a history of violence were more likely assigned toward male social workers. Conversely, adolescent clients (male & female) with a history of violence were less likely to be assigned to male social workers, which was contradictory to the prediction. Thus, a significant cross over interaction (F (1, 23) = 11.84 p < .002) between the adult and adolescent conditions is noted. The hypothesis was only partially upheld.

Implications: Implications for service delivery, worker safety, decision-making, and supervision are discussed.

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