The Social Work Self-Efficacy Scale: A Tool for Program Planning and Assessment

Background/Purpose:  All accredited social work programs in the United States must demonstrate to the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) their students have mastered a set of core competencies. Mastery of the core competencies is measured by demonstrated competence in performing a set of social work practice behaviors. Social work faculty are challenged to substantiate how students are performing on those practice behaviors. The Social Work Self-Efficacy Scale (SWSE) is an empirically validated instrument that can be used to rate how confident students are in their ability to successfully perform social work practice behaviors or tasks. 

Albert Bandura (1977) coined the term self-efficacy. It reflects how confident students are about performing specific tasks. Also, learners' ability to self-assess their own strengths and limitations during the learning process is linked to overall self-efficacy. The SWSE is used as an assessment tool to measure the confidence of students enrolled in a BSW program capstone course to perform social work practice behaviors.

The purpose of the exploratory research is to determine students’ confidence in executing social work practice behaviors.

Methods:  Students enrolled in a BSW program capstone course completed the SWSE in class. The SWSE is a 52-item scale, and the scoring ranges from 0 = Cannot do at all to 100 = Certain can do.  The instrument was self-administered.

The convenience sample consists of 29 students enrolled in a BSW program capstone course.  The mean and standard deviation were captured for each of the instruments’ 52 items.

Results:  The majority of the respondents are African American (95%).  The majority of the respondents are female (75%). Descriptive statistics reveal high scores for those social work behaviors that measure engagement with the client (e.g., confidence in providing support to clients (M = 91.5, SD =12.3); confidence in employing empathy to help clients feel that they can trust you (M = 90.7, SD = 11.4); confidence in helping clients feel like they want to open up to you (M = 90.7, SD 11.7); confidence in employing the treatment relationship so clients can feel accepted for who they are (M = 90.4, SD 12.8); and confidence in pointing out clients’ success to increase their self-confidence (M = 90.4, SD = 13.1).  The respondents had less confidence in their ability to perform tasks related to policy practice and research (e.g., analyzing a critical piece of welfare legislation (M = 67.8, SD = 20.4); defining the impact of major social policy on vulnerable client populations (M = 67.8, SD = 21.4); evaluating your own practice using appropriate research methods (M = 68.9, SD = 24.4); and  participating in using research methods to address problems encountered in practice and agency based settings (M = 68.9, SD= 25.0).

 

Conclusions:  Using the SWSE has a dual purpose. The instrument can be used to supplement and augment other program assessment activities which measure students’ mastery of CSWE core competencies.  Additionally, scores on the SWSE can be used as data which guide changes to the curriculum.