Bridging Disciplinary Boundaries (January 11 - 14, 2007)

Purpose: A critical aspect of social work research involves ensuring that research results are utilized in practice and MSW education is one significant mechanism for translation of alcohol research into practice. This study involves training MSW educators across the country to understand and use the new NIAAA social work curriculum materials, and examines the effects of this training on their knowledge and comfort with this type of content. An earlier report on this project indicated that social work educators had very little prior training on alcohol use disorders, low levels of comfort in training their students, and included little actual content in their course/supervisory content. This report concerns immediate outcomes of the trainings. Methods: Training was delivered to MSW faculty, field instructors, ad hoc instructors, and doctoral student assistants through 2-day intensive “live” training sessions. Everyone received training on five modules (epidemiology, etiology, screening, assessment, and intervention) and some combination of four others from among the total 21 modules. In addition to demographic and background questions, respondents rated their past training and their comfort level in each alcohol-related content area using a five-point scale (0=none, 4=very much). Participants also completed a 15-item Semantic Differential test (three domains of positive evaluation, level of power, and degree of activeness) addressing their feelings about alcohol use disorders in social work practice and education. Results: This initial outcomes report describes pre/post comparative results of data from the first 186 MSW educator participants. First, both training and comfort scores improved significantly over time (p<.001, repeated measures ANOVAs) on all modules for which training was received. A distinct halo effect was also detected: the same pattern was observed for modules where no specific training occurred. In a series of 2x2 doubly repeated measures ANOVAs (time as pre, post x rating as training, comfort), the interactions for most modules depicted greater increases on participants' sense of having been trained in alcohol use disorders than on their comfort level in teaching the content to others. However, comfort ratings began and remained significantly higher than training level, as well. There were no significant changes in participants' attitudes toward social work practice or teaching of students about alcohol use disorders, as measured by the Semantic Differential Scales. Implications: Training social work educators on the new NIAAA curriculum has a significant short-term impact on their self-evaluation as being trained in specific content areas and on their sense of comfort in training their students in these areas of social work practice. The impact is more powerful for training than for comfort, but training scores had more room for improvement at the start. Future reports will address the long-term follow-up of participant changes, including actual teaching content improvements. What is taught to social work students about alcohol use disorders has a strong likelihood of significance for their future social work practices.