What Is Self-Determination and Why Is It Important?

The main purpose of the study is to clarify the concept of self-determination and provide detailed attributes of the concept which reflects its philosophical base. The understanding of the principle of self-determination is critical because the way social workers think about self-determination is an essential component of what they do or do not do when engaged in social work practice. The principle of self-determination extends to economic, cultural, and social matters. The multiplicity of the self-determination principle often makes constructive and engaging discussions toward better social work practice difficult and confusing--sometimes impossible. Difficulties in resolution of ethical dilemmas related to client self-determination is partly due to the fact that there are many different meanings attached to self-determination.

Utilizing Rogers’ evolutionary concept analysis approach (1993), the present study examines the definitions, properties and attributes of self-determination by analyzing how self-determination has been conceptualized within the social work literature. In order to have a better understanding of the concept, the present project examined the definitions, properties and attributes of self-determination in social work literature (52 peer reviewed articles in social work journals with the word, self-determination in the title). Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) is used as a guideline (Moher, Liberati, Tetzlaff & Altman, 2009). Rogers’ evolutionary concept analysis approach (1993) will guide the analysis. The articles included in the final list are examined by data mining techniques to identify the basic features of the principle of self-determination including the keywords, characteristics and general categories of content. The intra-rater reliability was .91.

The main findings of this paper are as follows. Social work literature tends to (1) consider the notion of self-determination as almost the unabridged ethical content of the concept of human dignity; (2) perceive that the principle of self-determination is an internally driven principles about right and wrong by each individual; (3) define self-determination as refraining from constraints and interference in one another’s affairs; (4) use the concepts of positive freedom and negative freedom interchangeably; (5) agree on the inevitability of limit of self-determination; and (6) put heavy weights on the importance of right to do wrong acts.

Social work profession have struggled to resolve the dilemma of opposing priorities related to ethical principles. The results of the present study may indicate that the professional need to address this principle in terms of the quest for wholeness, neither purely objective nor subjective, but rather interdependent and communal (Palmer, 1993). Because the same words can have different meaning to different people, a good starting point would be a dialogue with a well-defined taxonomy with clear concepts where people can understand each other. Social work education needs to support its professionals in engaging in processes which challenge our own assumptions, examine our own personal ethical values, and scrutinize why we believe what we believe.