Srinika Jayaratne

The Effects of Emotional Support on Perceived Job Stress and Strain

This article uses a national sample of social workers to examine the relationship between work stress, strain, and emotional support. These results indicate negative associations between support and perceived stress and strain. The authors, however, found no evidence for the buffering effects of emotional support. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.

Dealing with Work Stress and Strain: Is the Perception of Support more Important than its Use?

The authors conducted a study of the relationship between the perception and use of support in ones work environment and their effects on perceived stress and strain. The analytic sample consisted of 480 social workers drawn from a national directory, who answered a 1O-page questionnaire with items addressing burnout and social support. The resulting data indicate that those who used existing support systems within their organizations generally reported benefiting from this, although the use of support does not necessarily result in positive outcomes. The study also indicated that one is more likely to use support if one perceives the work environment to be supportive. Implications for organizations and individuals are presented.

A National Survey of Violence in the Practice of Social Work

Social workers are at risk of violence in the workplace. Some of this violence has been attributed to deinstitutionalization and the very nature of problems addressed by social workers. Yet, we know very little about nationwide prevalence of such incidents. In this study, the authors look at a national sample of social workers drawn from the membership of the National Association of Social Workers, with particular attention to race, gender, and practice context. Data suggest that verbal abuse is quite common, whereas threats of assault and actual assault are less common, but problematic. Being young and male places a worker at higher risk, and public and nonprofit agency practitioners report many more incidents than workers in private practice.

Private and Agency Practitioners: Some Data and Observations

This study compares the demographics, education and training, perceptions of job performance, and job satisfaction among a sample of agency practitioners and a sample of private practitioners randomly selected from the 1985 National Association of Social Workers membership directory. Private practitioners report a significantly higher income, greater congruence between their training and their current job, and greaterjob satisfaction. Among the primary reasons cited by private practitioners for entering private practice are professional challenge, financial rewards, and dissatisfaction with agency job. We discuss the implications of these findings for the profession, the agency, and schools of social work.

Commitment of Private and Public Agency Workers to Child Welfare: How Long Do They Plan to Stay?

ABSTRACT Method: Child welfare professionals completing training to work in foster care were asked about reasons for taking their child welfare position, commitment to their agencies, and commitment to child welfare. Analyses compared responses from new public agency foster care workers (N = 100), public agency workers making lateral transfers to foster care (N = 64), and new private foster care workers (N = 105). Results: Private agency foster care workers were less committed to their agencies and to child welfare and more likely to have taken the position because it was the only one available. Conclusions: The practice by public child welfare of outsourcing foster care services to private agencies needs to be evaluated. This practice may not benefit children in care and may create organizational problems for agencies.

Predictors of job satisfaction, burnout and turnover among social workers in Norway and the USA: a cross-cultural study:

A vast array of research studies is available on job satisfaction, burnout and employee turnover among workers in the USA, some of which address the social work profession (Perlman and Hartman, 1982). Problems associated with these factors have been shown to be of a serious nature throughout the human service professions (Freudenberger, 1977; Maslach, 1982; Farber, 1983). In addition, recent studies in the USA have described the work of social workers in other cultures and have presented the implications of these studies for American workers (Harrison and Hoshino, 1984; Schneideman, 1978). But few studies have made direct cross-cultural comparisons between the perceptions of job satisfaction, burnout and turnover experienced by social workers in different countries. An exception to this is the research on job tedium among Israeli and American human service professionals by Etzion et al. ( 1983). In this study, we present a cross-cultural comparison of the perceptions of job satisfaction, burnout and turnover between a national sample of social workers in Norway and a national sample of social workers in the USA. Such a cross-cultural study is one way of enlarging our knowledge of the effect of work-related stress upon social workers in different cultures, as a basis for subsequent intervention to modify stress related to such cultural differences or similarities.

The comparative analysis and aggregation of single-case data

The use of single-case methodology has been widely promoted in many disciplines in recent years. Although the use of such a methodology by individual practitioners is feasible and desirable, little attention has been paid to the aggregation of such data for evaluating agencies. This article reports a study using single-case clinical data from an agency, and presents several methods for examining such information. The authors explore both the benefits of such analyses and the pitfalls associated with the proposed methods.

Race, Practice Behaviors and the NASW Code of Ethics

Abstract The NASW Code of Ethics is intended to serve as a guide to the everyday professional conduct of social workers. While the code is relatively comprehensive, it is viewed as a set of guidelines, and social workers are not necessarily obligated to abide by the code. This study examines the perceptions of African American (n = 219), Asian American (n = 185), Hispanic (n = 185), and White (n = 502) social workers on the appropriateness of a variety of professional behaviors utilizing random samples from the NASW membership directory.

The impact of setting on work-related stress and performance among Norwegian social workers

There have been numerous studies designed to examine the levels of burnout and work-related stress among social workers in particular work settings, such as child protective services (Harrison, 1980), day care centres (Maslach and Pines, 1977), mental health services (Pines and Maslach, 1978) with physically disabled persons (Stav et al., 1986), in shelters for battered women (Epstein and Silvern, 1990) and among high school teachers (Munakata and Shiija, 1986). While studies of work-related stress within certain social service

Counseling Update: A Flexible Monitoring Method for the Client and Practitioner

Recent years have seen a number of articles questioning both the utility and practicality of single-case designs. The authors propose a flexible monitoring method for practice evaluation. The proposed method is presented as a dynamic model, one that utilizes the existing evaluative procedures of the practitioner. This flexible method is proposed within the general outlines of developmental research. It is proposed as a method designed to lead practitioners toward an empirical model of practice. Some case examples are provided to substantiate the utility and value of the model.