The Effect of Race and Ethnicity on Social Work Clinical License Exam Outcomes

Background and Purpose: A literature review suggested that various factors at the individual, institutional, and community levels influence license exam outcomes. Based on the literature, we constructed a person-in-environment conceptual framework. We then tested the statistical significance of the individual, institutional, and community-level determinants of license exam outcomes identified in the literature using the ASWB Clinical exam data. The purpose of this study was to identify the positive and negative predictors of social work license exam passage and estimate the net effects of race and ethnicity on the passage of clinical license exams.

Methods: We conducted descriptive and logistic regression analyses using the 2018-2022 Clinical exam data (N = 88,678), merged with zip code-level income data from the U.S. Census Bureau and institutional characteristics data from the U.S. Department of Education. The clinical examinee's characteristics included demographic, educational, and employment information. The institutional characteristics variables measured the size of MSW programs and the racial and ethnic diversity of student bodies in the programs. The five-year average of the zip code–level median annual household incomes was measured to capture the socioeconomic characteristics of the communities that the examinees interacted with. We ran a logistic regression analysis to examine the net effect of race and ethnicity on Clinical exam failure while controlling for other determinants or predictors of the exam outcome, including examinees’ characteristics and the characteristics of their institutions and communities.

Results: The results suggested that examinees (1) who were younger, (2) who promptly took exams once becoming eligible, (3) who attended large institutions with more resources, and (4) those who attended schools that serve students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds were more likely to pass the exam exams. Examinees who resided in socioeconomically integrated communities were also more likely to pass the exams. Furthermore, the results indicated that if examinees from minoritized groups had individual, institutional, and community characteristics similar to those of White examinees, the Black-White disparity in exam pass rates could decline by approximately 20%, and the Hispanic-White disparity by around 27%. With 58% of Black examinees interacting with the lowest-income areas, their outcomes were influenced more by socioeconomic status. However, Hispanic examinees’ outcomes were affected more by their educational backgrounds. Our analyses could not incorporate the number of crucial predictors of exam outcomes identified in the literature and the person-in-environment framework. Despite the data limitations, the results on the determinants of exam outcomes were strikingly consistent with the existing evidence in the literature of other professions.

Conclusions and Implications: The prevalence of racial disparities across many professions’ license exams indicates that the causes of disparities are deeply rooted in the fabric of our socioeconomic systems. The findings highlight the need for further research to explore the crucial determinants of exam outcomes, which were not included in this study due to data constraints. We can then identify the sources of disparities and understand how to intervene strategically.