Social Work Faculty Engagement in Policy Practice in the US

Background

Although literature in many fields has examined faculty involvement in community engagement as a major innovation in higher education, little research exists regarding faculty engagement in policy practice endeavors. Given the current economic, social, and political challenges, social work expertise has much to offer to the policy-making process. Social work academics play a vital role in not only the renewal and expansion of the professional knowledge base, but in production and regeneration of a skilled social work work-force. In the light of these evolving discussions of policy practice engagement, this study explores the level of involvement of social work academics at the local, state, and national levels.

Methods

Using the quantitative data gathered from an online survey among social work faculty members (N=107, response rate=36%) from accredited social work programs in the US, this study explored the level of policy practice engagement among social work faculty through a three phased statistical analysis: descriptive, bivariate correlations, and a hierarchical regression analysis. We used multiple imputation method as a remedy to the missing data issue, due to its unbiased parameter estimates and robustness of normality assumptions, further providing adequate results in the presence of smaller sample size. Our instrument included broad measures of five variables: level of social work faculty engagement in policy practice, perceived academic environment support, perceived social role of academia, perceived personal role as academics, and perceived policy practice competencies.

Results

Results revealed positive relationships between perceived policy practice competencies and the level of social work faculty engagement in policy practice (r=.55, p<0.01), student support (r=.32, p<0.01), and policy role (r=0.33, p<0.01). Results from the hierarchical regression analysis revealed tenure status; perceived personal role as a social work scholar into public, professional, policy, and critical roles; and perceived personal policy involvement competencies to have significant influence on the level of social work faculty engagement in policy practice. As tenure status increased from non-tenured to tenured, social work faculty members were less likely to be engaged in policy practice (β =-.31, p<.01). Perceived policy role (β=.29, p<.001) and perceived social work scholar competencies (β=.44, p<.001) were significant predictors of social work faculty engagement in policy practice. The model explained 39 % of variance in the level of social work faculty engagement in policy practice measure.

Implications

The results of our study provide valuable implications into the correlates of social work advocacy efforts.  Further research on faculty engagement in policy practice is critical, including  comparative research across disciplines that would highlight the distinctive elements of professional schools (e.g., social work, nursing, public administration, business) compared to liberal arts, and science, technology, engineering and math departments. By measuring the current level of policy practice among social work academics in the US, our study sparks further discussion across disciplines, universities, and countries regarding the value of applying expert knowledge to important issues. As the implementation of social work’s social justice goal requires a commitment to policy practice, our study provides implications for investments to facilitate policy practice engagement among social work faculty.