Social Workers and Policy- Practice: The Role of Social and Professional Values

Social Workers and Policy- Practice: The Role of Socialand Professional Values

Idit Weiss-GalJohn Gal

ABSTRACT. Although policy practice is regarded as an essential component of social work, the actualinvolvement of social workers in policy practice is apparently very limited. This article presents thefindings of a study that seeks to explore the role of social and professional values in support by socialworkers in Israel for engagement in policy practice and their actual involvement in this type of practice.The findings indicate that socioeconomic orientations and professional values have an impact on socialworker’s perception of policy practice and the degree to which they are actually involved in the socialwelfare policy process. In particular, it was found that attitudes toward social justice played a majorrole in the social worker’s perceptions of, and involvement in, policy practice.

KEYWORDS. Policy practice, social workers, values, social justice, social welfare policy

INTRODUCTION

The promotion of social justice is one ofthe professed aims of the social work profes-sion (Craig, 2002; Hare, 2004; Reisch, 2002).To attain this aim, there is a wide agreementwithin the field of social work regarding theneed for social workers to engage in policy prac-tice (Figueira-McDonough, 1993; Gal & Weiss,2000; Gibbons & Gray, 2005; Hagen, 1992;Haynes & Mickelson, 2003; Jansson, 2003;Sherraden, Slosar, & Sherraden, 2002; Stuart,1999; Wyers, 1991). This type of practice is de-fined by Jansson (2003) as “efforts to changepolicies in legislative, agency and communitysettings whether by establishing new policies,improving existing ones or defeating the policyinitiatives of other people” (p. 10).

Idit Weiss-Gal, PhD, is senior lecturer at the Bob Shapell School of Social work, Tel-Aviv University,Israel. John Gal, PhD, is associate professor at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare,Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.

Address correspondence to: Idit Weiss-Gal, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel-Aviv University,Ramat-Aviv, 69978, P.O.B 39040, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]

However, there is a large gap between vi-sion and reality. While individual social work-ers have played dominant roles in socialstruggles, the actual involvement of most so-cial workers in different countries in policypractice is marginal (Gibelman & Schervish,1993; Koeske, Lichtenwalter, & Koeske, 2005;Mendes, 2003; Teare & Sheafor, 1995). This dis-parity has given rise to considerable concern andself-criticism among professionals (Figueira-McDonough, 1993; Lens & Gibelman, 2000).

One of the questions this disparity raises iswhat factors affect social workers’ perceptionsof, and engagement in, policy practice. Despitethe recurrent calls within the profession to playa role in policy formulation and implementa-tion, this issue has received very little empir-ical attention. In an effort to begin to answer

Journal of Social Service Research, Vol. 34(4) 2008Available online at http://www.haworthpress.comC© 2008 by The Haworth Press. All rights reserved.

doi: 10.1080/01488370802162301 15

16 JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH

this question, this article examines the relation-ship between social workers’ sociodemographiccharacteristics; on the one hand, their social andprofessional values and perceptions, and on theother hand, the importance they attribute to pol-icy practice and the degree to which they engagein it.

The Value Bases of Policy Practice inSocial Work

Policy practice in social work rests, to agood extent, on the value of social (or dis-tributive) justice (Figueira-McDonough, 1993;Iatridis, 1995). Although defined in a variety ofways (Reisch, 2002), social justice is generallyperceived to include, among other things, a vi-sion of a society in which all people have equalaccess to social resources, basic social goods,and equal social rights; a society in which un-acceptable inequalities in income, wealth, andopportunities are reduced (Barker, 1995). Theassumption here is that social workers who iden-tify with this value will be both more supportiveof types of intervention perceived as seeking tofurther this social goal and thus more likely toadopt policy practice. An empirical basis for theassumed link between support for the value ofsocial justice and a readiness to engage in policypractice emerged in a study that found that so-cial work students that placed high regard on thesociety-oriented goals of social work were alsothose most ready to engage in policy practice(Weiss, 2003).

It is also often claimed that the realization ofsocial justice requires a societal commitment toprogressive approaches to the provision of socialwelfare, manifested in state involvement throughpredominantly universal policies favoring theprevention and reduction of social problems andthe fostering of social rights and redistribution(Craig, 2002; Figueira-McDonough, 1993). Onthe basis of this claim the assumption would bethat willingness to engage in policy practice willbe linked to support for a greater role for the statein the provision of welfare and in redistributionof resources. Indeed, scholars seeking to explainthe movement away from policy practice in so-

cial work have linked this trend to the strength-ening of neoconservative ideas and their impacton the values and assumptions of social workers(Gibelman, 1999; Jones & Novak, 1993).

Policy practice also rests on the understand-ing that individuals’ problems and distress arerooted not only in personal factors but alsoin social ones (Haynes & Mickelson, 2003;Netting, Kettner, & McMurtry, 1993). If indeedthe sources of distress are to be found in the en-vironment rather than within the individual, therole of social workers is to bring about changein those external factors that have a negative im-pact on clients. Policy practice is the type ofintervention most suited to furthering this goal.It aims to promote policies that would extendsocial rights to all, especially to persons livingin poverty and social exclusion, and to changepolicies that restrict social rights, do not providefor basic social needs, and do not address socialinequalities (Jansson, 2003; Lens & Gibelman,2000).

The assumption in this study is that supportfor social justice will be associated with sup-port for, and engagement in, policy practice insocial work. The study thus hypothesizes thatsocial workers that hold more progressive orien-tations, who tend to attribute problems to struc-tural causes, and who support government in-volvement in social welfare and universal ser-vices will be more inclined to support and engagein policy-level practice. It also hypothesizes thatsocial workers who attribute greater importanceto the social goals of the profession (social jus-tice, environmental, and societal change) will bemore inclined to support and engage in policypractice.

In sum, this study seeks to determine the ex-tent to which social and professional values—asdefined by the importance that social workers at-tribute to the goals of the profession—and socialvalues—as defined by the social workers’ politi-cal and economic orientations, their perceptionsof the causes of poverty, their support for greaterstate involvement in the provision of welfare,and their support for universal non–mean-testedsocial services—play a role in the social work-ers’ attitudes toward, and engagement in, policypractice.

Weiss-Gal and Gal 17

METHOD

Sample

The study is based on a convenience sam-ple of 411 social workers from 27 social serviceagencies in Israel. Of this sample, 83% workedin municipal or government welfare services,13.6% in the voluntary sector, and 3.4% in thefor-profit sector. This distribution is similar tothat of the population of social workers in Is-rael (Bar-Zuri, 2004). For each sector, socialworkers were sampled from all of Israel’s ge-ographic areas and from a variety of agenciesserving different client groups and dealing withdiverse problems. Thus, for the state sector, so-cial workers were sampled from municipal wel-fare departments, the youth and adult probationservices, government hospitals, special schools,and others. For the voluntary sector, workerswere sampled from advocacy organizations, so-cial service organizations, and private nonprofithospitals. The for-profit sector consisted of a pri-vate agency that provides nursing services to theelderly throughout Israel.

The study questionnaires were distributed toall social workers in each organization sampled.The social workers that constitute the sampleare those who completed the questionnaires. Re-sponse rates in the various organizations rangedfrom 40% to 90%. The overall response rate was65%.

The questionnaires were distributed to socialworkers between June and December 2004. Thequestionnaires were distributed prior to a lec-ture that the first researcher delivered to socialworkers employed in 8 of the 27 social serviceagencies in the study. The lecture was deliveredafter the researcher approached the head of theservice with an offer to address the social work-ers on a subject of interest to them (e.g., criticaltheories in social work, the Israeli welfare state)in exchange for the workers filling out the ques-tionnaires. In two instances, heads of services re-quested the lectures on their own. To avoid bias-ing the responses, the questionnaires were filledout before the lecture. In social services in whichall-staff meetings are not held, the questionnaireswere placed in the social workers’ mailboxes.In these cases, the social workers filled out the

questionnaire at a time of their choosing. A let-ter explaining the purpose and importance ofthe study and guaranteeing anonymity accom-panied the questionnaires. Questionnaires thatwere filled out before the lecture were accompa-nied by a blank envelope and once completedwere placed in a cardboard box in the roomwhere the lecture was delivered. Those that werefilled out at a time of the respondents’ choosingwere accompanied by a self-addressed envelopeand either mailed to the researcher directly orgiven to the secretary from whom the sealed en-velopes were collected. Both prior to the lecturesgiven to the social workers and in the lettersaccompanying the questionnaires, it was madevery clear to the social workers that their partic-ipation in the survey was entirely voluntary.

No statistically significant differences werefound in the mean scores of the independentand dependent variables of respondents surveyedaccording to either of the two methods.

Table 1 presents the sociodemographic andprofessional features of the social workers. Ascan be seen, the great majority of the social work-ers in the sample were women (85.3%), married(77.6%), Jewish (85.1%), and secular (64.7%).The gender distribution was similar to that inthe overall social worker population in Israel(Bar-Zuri, 2004). Ages ranged from 22 to 66years, with the mean being 36.88 (SD = 9.45),which is similar to the mean age in the professionin Israel.

More than two thirds of the social workers inthe sample (73.3%) had a BSW (which, in Israel,allows them to work in the profession), and theremainder had an MSW or PhD (27%). The ed-ucational distribution of the sample is consistentwith the mean education of social workers in Is-rael. This stands at 16.9 years (Bar-Zuri, 2004)in an educational system in which the BSW, likeother undergraduate degrees, is a three-year pro-gram. More than half of the social workers wereemployed full time (53.8%), around one thirdat least half time (35.0%), and only around onetenth less than half time (11.2%). This distribu-tion, too, is not dissimilar to that in the professionas a whole. The respondents were employed associal workers for between 1 and 42 years. Ascan be seen in Table 1, almost 60% had workedin the profession for between 3 and 10 years


TABLE 1. Demographic and ProfessionalCharacteristics of the Social Workers

(N = 411)

Variable Values N %

Gender (N = 408) Female 348 85.3Male 60 14.7

Age (N = 411) 22–30 138 34.431–40 137 34.240+ 126 31.4M = 36.88 SD = 9.45

Marital status(N = 406)

Married 315 77.6

Unmarried 91 22.4Ethnicity (N = 409) Jew 348 85.1

Arab 61 14.9Religiosity (N = 402) Secular 260 64.7

Religious 142 35.3Social work degree

(N = 404)BSW 296 73.3

MSW 108 27.0% of employment

(N = 374)50% 42 11.2

51%–99% 131 35.0100% (full time) 201 53.8

Years of employmentin social work(N = 395)

0–2 years 22 5.6

3–5 years 112 28.46–10 years 114 28.911–15 years 63 15.9over 16 years 84 21.3

Private practice(N = 366)

Not at all 339 92.6

In addition 27 7.4

Note: Because of missing data, the totals do not equal the specifiedN.

and 21.3% for over 16 years. Finally, only 7.4%engaged in private practice in addition to theiremployment in a social service agency.

Instruments

The independent variables were: (1) sociode-mographic and professional variables, (2) so-cioeconomic and political orientation, (3) per-ceived causes of poverty, (4) support for stateinvolvement in welfare provision, (5) supportfor universal social services (i.e., without meanstests), and (6) perceived importance of dif-ferent social work goals. The dependent vari-ables were: workers’ support for policy practicein social work and their involvement in policypractice.

Sociodemographic and professional vari-ables

The sociodemographic and professional vari-ables that were queried were: age, gender, mar-ital status, ethnicity, religiosity, social work ed-ucation, years of experience as a social worker,and engaging in private practice.

Socioeconomic and political orientation

Socioeconomic and political orientationwas assessed by two questions, one query-ing their political orientation and the othertheir socioeconomic orientation. The scales,which are commonly employed in compara-tive studies on the role of government (see,http://www.issp.org/data.shtml, Role of Govern-ment III) and are undertaken regularly in diversewelfare states, among them the United Statesand Israel. The first asked respondents to lo-cate themselves on a 5-point Right–Left politicalcontinuum, with 1 = Right Wing and 5 = LeftWing. The second presented the respondentswith four socioeconomic approaches—only cap-italist, mainly capitalist, mainly socialist, onlysocialist—and asked them to select the one thatmost closely accorded with their own beliefs.

Perceived causes of poverty

Perceived causes of poverty were measuredby a scale developed by the authors. The firstdraft of this questionnaire was constructed onthe basis of a questionnaire employed in previ-ous studies (Weiss, 2005). To increase the in-ternal consistency of that questionnaire, someitems were removed, some rephrased, and someadded. Three social work researchers in Israelwere then asked to review the revised question-naire. Further revisions were made in as a re-sult of their comments. The new version wasthen tested in a pilot study among 45 MSW stu-dents and 48 economics students in their lastyear of undergraduate study. Although the sub-sequent factor analysis indicated high contentvalidity, a few small changes in phrasing weremade before the administration of the question-naire to the study participants. The final versionof the scale was comprised of 18 items witheach item naming a possible cause of poverty.


Respondents were asked to rate their agreementwith each item on a 5-point Likert-type scale(1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Aprincipal components factor analysis with vari-max rotation yielded three factors with eigen-values greater than 1.0, which jointly explained60% of the variance. The first factor, “psycho-logical causes,” consisted of seven items (e.g.,“Many poor people suffer from emotional prob-lems that are the basis of their economic dif-ficulties”). The second factor, “lack of motiva-tion and responsibility,” consisted of five items(e.g., “People are poor because they don’t makea sufficient effort to find work”). The third fac-tor, “structural causes,” consisted of six items(e.g., “Poverty is mainly the result of social /environmental factors”). Internal consistencieswere high, with Cronbach’s alpha = .86 on psy-chological causes,.89 on lack of motivation andresponsibility, and.83 on structural causes. Theparticipant’s score on each factor was calculatedas the mean of his or her responses to all theitems in that factor.

Support for State Involvement in Welfare

This variable was examined by a 15-itemquestionnaire developed for the purpose of thisstudy. The questionnaire examined social work-ers’ support for government responsibility forsocial welfare, their readiness to pay for socialwelfare expenditures, and their views on the pos-sible disadvantages of benefits to their recipients.For each item, respondents were asked to ratetheir agreement on a 5-point Likert scale, with 1= don’t agree and 5 = strongly agree. The firstdraft of this questionnaire was constructed onthe basis of a questionnaire employed in previ-ous studies that compared attitudes in Israel, theUnited States, and the United Kingdom (Weiss,Gal, & Cnaan, 2005). The issues included inthe questionnaire related to major characteris-tics of the modern welfare state and, in particu-lar, to central issues of debate regarding the na-ture of social provision (Esping-Andersen, 1999;Huber & Stephens, 2001; Pierson, 1998). Theseissues have been the focus of various surveys thathave sought to identify public opinion towardthe welfare state (Svallfors & Taylor-Gooby,1999).To increase the internal consistency of that

questionnaire, some items were removed, somerephrased, and some added. Three researchers onsocial welfare policy in Israel were then asked toreview the revised questionnaire with an eye towhether it adequately examined support for thewelfare state. Further revisions were made as aresult of their comments. The new version wasthen tested in a pilot study on 45 MSW studentsand 48 economics students in their last year ofundergraduate study. Although the subsequentfactor analysis indicated high content validity, afew small changes in phrasing were made beforethe administration of the questionnaire.

Principal components factor analysis of theresponses in the present study yielded three fac-tors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0: (1) “neg-ative effects of benefits on their recipients,” con-sisting of five items (e.g., “welfare encourageslaziness” or “welfare benefits undermine indi-vidual responsibility”); (2) “readiness to pay forsocial welfare services,” consisting of five items(e.g., “I am ready to pay higher taxes so as toincrease spending on social welfare”); and (3)“government responsibility for social welfare”consisting of five items (e.g., “The governmentshould guarantee that no one should suffer fromsevere deprivation”). These factors jointly ex-plained 59% of the variance. The internal consis-tencies of the first two factors were high (Cron-bach’s alpha = .89 for “negative effects of bene-fits on their recipients” and.83 for “readiness topay for welfare”), and for the third factor werelower but acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha = .66).The internal consistency of the scale as a wholewas high (Cronbach’s alpha = .84).

Each participant received three scores in ac-cord with the mean of his or her responses on theitems in each factor. So that the scores would allhave the same directionality, the items in the firstfactor were reversed and the factor was renamed“opposition to the view that benefits have neg-ative effects.” The higher the scores, the greaterthe participant’s support for state involvement inwelfare.

Support for Universal Benefits

This variable was examined by a seven-itemquestionnaire developed for the purpose of thestudy. It sought to touch on an issue, that of


universal versus selective benefits, which is gen-erally perceived as indicative of attitudes to-ward the welfare state and toward social welfare(Kangas, 1995; Korpi & Palme, 1998). This hasbeen particularly the case in recent years dur-ing which more conservative governments havesought to dismantle the predominantly univer-sal system of benefits in Israel and to introducea more selective system, which determines ac-cess to benefits on the basis of income level(Doron, 2001). As such, support for universalbenefits and services has been associated withmore progressive views on social welfare whilesupport for the introduction of greater selectiv-ity is perceived as reflecting a more conservativeattitude toward social welfare. The procedureused to develop this questionnaire was the sameas that used to develop the questionnaire exam-ining the participants’ support for the welfarestate. Four of the seven items refer to supportfor universal benefits (e.g., “All families withchildren should receive child allowances, what-ever their income”). Three refer to support forselective, means-tested benefits (e.g., “Old agepensions should be given only to elderly personswho are poor”). The participants were asked toindicate their agreement with each statement ona 5-point Likert scale, with 1 = disagree and 5= strongly agree. Internal consistency was high:Cronbach’s alpha = .85. Scores were calculatedas the mean of each participant’s ratings on theseven items, after the scaling of the three itemsthat tapped support for selective benefits wasreversed. Thus, higher scores meant greater sup-port for the principle of universal benefits.

Perceived Importance of Social Work Goals

Perceived importance of social work goalswas measured by a 14-item scale listing vari-ous social work goals and asking respondents torate the importance they attributed to each ona 5-point Likert-type scale (1 = very little im-portance, 5 = very great importance). A scaleemployed in a previous study served as the ba-sis for the scale employed here (Weiss, 2005).Nearly all of the 11 items in the original scalewere rephrased and three new items were added.The new version was validated in a process thatbegan with a review by three experts (senior fac-

ulty at two schools of social work in Israel) and10 practicing social workers, who were asked tojudge whether the scale covered the entire rangeof social work goals and whether the goals werephrased clearly and precisely. A small numberof changes were made on the basis of their com-ments, and the revised version of the scale wastested on 70 social workers studying for an MSWdegree. Further changes were made following afactor analysis yielding the present version ofthe questionnaire.

A principal components factor analysis of theresponses in the present study yielded three fac-tors with eigenvalues greater than 1.0. Thesefactors jointly explained 55.6% of the variance.The first factor, “enhancing individuals’ innerresources,” consisted of six items (e.g., “enhanc-ing the capacities of individuals to deal withtheir problems”); the second, “promoting socialjustice,” consisted of five items (e.g., “ensuringequal access to social resources”), and the third,“exerting social control,” consisted of two items(e.g., “encouraging law abiding behavior amongdelinquents” and “ control of offenders”). Oneitem, “protecting people at risk, such as batteredwomen and children at risk,” had a factor load-ing lower than.45 in all three factors. Becauseof the importance of this item, it was includedin the analysis as a single item. Cronbach’s al-phas were satisfactory:.75 for enhancing indi-viduals’ inner resources,.80 for promoting socialjustice, and.80 for exerting social control. Fourscores were obtained from this questionnaire:three were the mean response on the items ineach of the three factors, and one was the re-sponse on the single item. The higher the scores,the greater the importance attributed to the goal.

Support for Policy Practice in Social Work

Support for policy practice in social work wasassessed by a questionnaire developed for thepresent study that examined the degree to whichthe respondents viewed a range of interventionsas fitting for social workers to engage in. Thefirst version of this scale consisted of 35 itemsthat covered a wide range of social work in-terventions in both casework and policy prac-tice. This questionnaire underwent the same pro-cess of validation as the perceived importance of


social work goals questionnaire, the experts andsocial workers being asked to indicate whetherthis scale covered the main interventions theyemployed. After overlapping interventions werecondensed, 32 interventions were included in thefinal version of the scale.

Respondents were asked to indicate howmuch they regarded each intervention as fittingfor social workers to engage in on a 5-point Lik-ert scale, ranging from 1 = not at all to 5 = verymuch. A principal components factor analysisyielded six factors with eigenvalues greater than1.0, which jointly explained 60% of the variance.The policy practice factor consisted of seven in-terventions: (1) promoting social legislation, (2)enhancing public awareness of social problems,(3) changing policies of the social services (e.g.,discrimination, inaccessibility, poor service); (4)providing consultation to social welfare policymakers; (5) organizing protests against undesir-able social welfare policies; (6) supporting com-munity action groups; and (7) exerting pressureon organizations and services to change policiesto better serve client groups. The Cronbach’s al-pha for this factor was .88. The score was themean of the responses to the seven items. Thehigher the score, the greater the support for pol-icy practice in social work.

Involvement in Policy Practice

Involvement in policy practice was measuredby the same seven items on the policy prac-tice factor previously described. Respondentswere asked to indicate how much they actuallyengaged in each form of intervention on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = not at all to5 = very much. The Cronbach’s alpha was .87.Scores were calculated as the mean of the re-spondent’s ratings on the seven items. The higherthe score, the greater the actual involvement inpolicy practice.

RESULTS

The mean scores for the dependant variableswere M = 4.01 (SD = .65, N = 411) for supportfor policy practice and M = 1.97 (SD = .89,N = 411) for involvement in policy practice.

The first phase of the analysis examined theassociations among all the independent variablesand the two dependent variables: support for pol-icy practice and engagement in policy practice.One-way ANOVAs were performed on the cate-gorical variables (gender, marital status, nation-ality, religiosity, social work degree, and havinga private practice).

Significant differences were found only foractual policy practice, with significant differ-ences by gender (F (1, 409) = 23.61; p <.001η2 = .06), ethnicity (F (1, 409) = 48.03;p <.001, η2 = .11) and religiosity (F (1, 409) =24.24; p <.001, η2 = .06). The results showedthat men were more involved in policy practice(M = 2.47 SD = 1.09, N = 60) than women(M = 1.88 SD = .82, N = 348), that Arabsocial workers were more involved (M = 2.66SD = .91, N = 348) than Jewish social workers(M = 1.85 SD = .83, N = 61), and that religioussocial workers were more involved (M = 2.25SD = .99, N = 142) than the secular workers(M = 1.81 SD = .79, N = 260).

Pearson correlations were calculated for thecontinuous variables (age, years of social workexperience, perceived causes of poverty, per-ceived importance of social work goals, supportfor universal benefits, and support for the welfarestate). These are presented in Table 2. Becausethe large sample size resulted in very weak corre-lations attaining statistical significance, we referhere only to differences that were significant atp <.001.

Support for policy practice was positively cor-related with socioeconomic orientation, politicalorientation, attribution of poverty to structuralcauses, the view that government was responsi-ble for social welfare, and attribution of impor-tance to the goals of enhancing individuals’ in-ner resources and promoting social justice. Themore progressive the social workers’ socioeco-nomic orientation, the more left wing their polit-ical orientation, the more they viewed poverty asrooted in structural causes, the more they con-sidered the government responsible for socialwelfare, the more importance they attributed tothe profession’s enhancing individuals’ inner re-sources and promoting social justice, and themore they supported policy practice in socialwork. Of all the correlations, by far the strongest


TABLE 2. Association AmongSociodemographic Features, Socioeconomicand Political Orientation, Causes of Poverty,

Support for State Involvement in Welfare, andSocial Work Goals, and Support for, and

Engagement in, Policy Practice (N = 411)

Support for Engagement inpolicy practice policy practice

Age .03 –.09Years of employment in

social work.06 –.03

Socioeconomic and political orientationSocioeconomic

orientation.21∗∗∗ .17∗∗∗

Political orientation .16∗∗∗ .04Causes of poverty

Psychological causes –.08 –.12∗Lack of motivation and

responsibility–.12 –.14∗∗

Structural causes .29∗∗∗ .23∗∗∗Support for the state involvement in welfare

Opposition to the viewthat welfare has anegative effect

.13∗ .16∗∗∗

Readiness to pay forsocial welfare services

.17∗∗∗ .10

Governmentresponsibility for socialwelfare

.24∗∗∗ .13∗

Support for universalbenefits

.11∗ .16∗∗∗

Importance of socialwork goals

Enhancing individuals’inner resources

.27∗∗∗ –.07

Promoting social justice .56∗∗∗ .26∗∗∗Exerting social control .00 –.18∗∗∗Protecting people at risk .17∗∗ .02

∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01. ∗∗∗p < .001.

one was with promoting social justice. The viewthat poverty was rooted in structural causes andthe ascription of importance to enhancing indi-viduals’ inner resources were moderately asso-ciated with support for policy practice in socialwork. The other correlations were weak.

Engagement in policy practice correlated sig-nificantly and positively with socioeconomicorientation, attribution of poverty to structuralcauses, opposition to the view that welfare hasnegative effects on its recipients, readiness topay for social welfare services, support for uni-versal benefits, and attribution of importance to

the goal of promoting social justice, and corre-lated significantly and negatively with attribu-tion of importance to the goal of exerting socialcontrol. In addition, engagement in policy cor-related significantly and positively with supportfor policy practice in social work (r = .39, N =411). In other words, the more progressive thesocial workers’ socioeconomic orientation, themore they attributed poverty to structural causes,the more they opposed the view that welfare hadnegative effects on its recipients, the readier theywere to pay for social welfare, the greater theirsupport for universal services, the more impor-tance they attributed to the goal of promotingsocial justice and the less importance they at-tributed to the goal of exerting social control,and, finally, the more they supported policy prac-tice in social work, the more they engaged inpolicy practice.

In the second phase of the analysis, a five-stepand then a six-step hierarchical regression wereperformed to examine the total and uniquecontribution of all the sets of variables tothe explanations of the variance in the socialworkers’ support for policy practice and intheir engagement in policy practice. The firstfive steps of the two regressions were identical.The three demographic features found to besignificantly correlated with at least one of thedependent variables—that is, gender, ethnicity,and religiosity—were entered in the firststep of both regressions. The two ideologicalorientation variables (political orientation, eco-nomic orientation) were entered in the secondsteps. The three perceived causes of poverty(psychological causes, lack of motivation andresponsibility, structural causes) were enteredin the third steps. The three support for thesocial welfare variables (disagreement with theclaim that benefits have negative effects on theirrecipients, readiness to pay for social welfareservices, government responsibility for socialwelfare) and the support for universal benefitsvariable were entered in the fourth steps. Theperceived importance of four social workgoals (enhancing individuals’ inner resources,promoting social justice, exerting social control,and protecting people at risk) were entered in thefifth steps. In the second regression that focusedon engagement in policy practice, a sixth step


TABLE 3. Regression Coefficients for Support for Policy Practice

Steps (ß)

Predictors 1 2 3 4 5

Gender .00 .01 .03 .05 .00Ethnicity .06 –.01 –.04 –.04 .01Religiosity –.04 .02 .01 .01 –.01Political orientation .14∗ .09 .08 .08Socioeconomic orientation .21∗∗∗ .15∗∗ .13∗ .06Psychological causes –.08 –.08 –.06Lack of motivation .03 .03 .08Structural causes .24∗∗∗ .18∗∗ .10Support for universal benefits .06 .04Welfare does not have a negative effect –.04 –.00Readiness to pay for welfare .06 .01Government responsibility .10 –.00Enhancing inner resources .11∗Promoting social justice .47∗∗∗Exerting social control –.02Protecting people at risk –.02R2 .00 .07∗∗∗ .12∗∗∗ .13∗∗∗ .36∗∗∗�R2 .00 .07∗∗∗ .05∗∗∗ .01 .23∗∗∗

∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01. ∗∗∗p < .001.

was entered that was comprised of the supportfor policy practice variables. Table 3 presentsthe regression coefficients in all five steps of theregression on support for policy practice.

As can be seen, the variables explained a to-tal of 36% of the variance in support for policypractice. None of the sociodemographic featuresmade a significant contribution to the explana-tion of the variance, nor did any of the supportfor the social welfare variables. Each of the otherfour sets of variables made a significant contri-bution. Ideological orientation contributed 7% tothe explanation of the variance, with the contri-bution of each variable significant and positive.That is, being more left wing and more pro-gressive contributed to greater support for policypractice in social work. Of the perceived causesof poverty, only structural causes made a sig-nificant contribution, adding another 5% to theexplanation of the variance. In other words, astronger conviction that poverty was rooted instructural factors contributed to greater supportfor policy practice. The perceived importanceof social work goals contributed another 23%to the explanation of the variance. Of the fourgoals, the contributions of two, enhancing in-dividuals’ inner resources and promoting social

justice, were significant. Viewing these goals asmore important contributed to greater supportfor policy practice. However, while the contri-bution of enhancing individuals’ inner resourceswas relatively modest, that of promoting socialjustice was very substantial.

Table 4 presents the regression coefficients inall six steps of the regression on engagement inpolicy practice. As can be seen, the variablesexplained 36% of the variance in engagementin policy practice. Here, the sociodemographicvariables contributed 13% to the variance, withthe contribution of each of the features signifi-cant. In other words, being male, Arab, and re-ligious all contributed significantly to involve-ment in policy practice. Sociopolitical orienta-tion added another 1% to the explanation of thevariance, largely because of the significant, al-beit small, contribution of socioeconomic orien-tation. That is, being a progressive contributedsomewhat to the social workers being more in-volved in policy practice. Perceived causes ofpoverty contributed another 3% to the explana-tion of the variance. Of the three possible causalexplanations, the only one whose contributionwas significant was the structural explanation.The more the social workers viewed poverty as


TABLE 4. Regression Coefficients for Engagement in Policy Practice

Steps (ß)

Predictors 1 2 3 4 5 6

Gender –.12∗ –.12∗ –.10 –.09 –.07 –.09Ethnicity .20∗∗∗ .17∗∗ .15∗∗ .16∗∗ .22∗∗∗ .21∗∗∗Religiosity .17∗∗ .19∗∗∗ .19∗∗∗ .20∗∗∗ .15∗∗ .16∗∗Political orientation .05 .01 .01 –.04 –.06–Socioeconomic orientation .10 .05 .05 .01 –.00Psychological causes –.09 –.10 –.02 .00Lack of motivation –.00 .03 .04 .01Structural causes .14∗∗ .15∗∗ .10 .06Support for universal benefits .05 .02 .00Welfare does not have a negative effect .05 .05 .05Readiness to pay for welfare .08 .05 .04Government responsibility –.08 –.13∗ –.13*Enhancing inner resources –.12* –.16∗∗Promoting social justice .29∗∗∗ .11Exerting social control –.20∗∗∗ –.19∗∗∗Protecting people at risk .04 .03Support for policy practice .37∗∗∗R2 .13∗∗∗ .14∗∗∗ .17∗∗∗ .18∗∗∗ .27∗∗∗ .36∗∗∗�R2 .13∗∗∗ .01 .03∗∗ .01 .08∗∗∗ .09∗∗∗

∗p < .05. ∗∗p < .01. ∗∗∗p < .001.

rooted in structural factors, the more they tendedto engage in policy practice. Support for the wel-fare state made no significant contribution to in-volvement in policy practice. Perceived impor-tance of social work goals added another 8% tothe explanation of the variance, with the contri-bution of three of the four goals significant. Thegoals of enhancing individuals’ inner resourcesand exerting social control had negative Betacoefficients; the goal of promoting social justicehad a positive Beta coefficient. In other words,greater ascription of importance to enhancingindividuals’ inner resources and to exerting so-cial control contributed to less involvement inpolicy practice, while greater ascription of im-portance to the goal of promoting social jus-tice contributed to greater involvement. Finally,the importance attributed to policy practice con-tributed another 9% to the variance. Greater im-portance ascribed to policy practice contributedto greater involvement in policy practice.

DISCUSSION

The findings of this study show associationsbetween several features of social workers’ so-

cial and professional values and their support for,and engagement in, policy practice. As hypoth-esized, the more progressive the social workers’socioeconomic orientation and the more inclinedthey were to attribute poverty to social and struc-tural factors, the more support they expressedfor policy practice and the more they actuallyengaged in it. In addition, the more the workersviewed the government as responsible for socialwelfare, the greater their support for policy prac-tice. The greater their opposition to the view thatbenefits have negative effects on their recipients,the more willing they were to pay for the socialwelfare services, and the greater their supportfor universal services, the more they actually en-gaged in policy practice.

The strongest associations were between theview that poverty is rooted in social or structuralcauses, on the one hand, and both support forand engagement in policy-practice, on the other.The findings thus point to a link, albeit weak,between what can be termed egalitarian socialvalues and social workers’ support for, and en-gagement in, policy practice. These findings areconsistent with the value foundation of policypractice (Iatridis, 1995).


With respect to professional values, the origi-nal hypothesis was also confirmed. As expected,the more importance the workers attributed topromoting social justice as an aim of the pro-fession, the greater both their support for andengagement in policy practice. The more im-portance they attributed to enhancing individ-uals’ inner resources, the greater their supportfor policy practice. The less importance they at-tributed to exerting social control, the greatertheir engagement in policy practice. Of the threefactors, the strongest associations were with theaim of social justice. These findings are consis-tent with the fact that the key aim of policy prac-tice is the promotion of social justice (Haynes &Mickelson, 2003; Jansson, 2003). Like the find-ings on social workers’ social values, the find-ings on their professional values also point to alink between egalitarian social values and socialworkers’ support for, and engagement in, policypractice. With this, the finding that attributingimportance to enhancing individuals’ inner re-sources was associated with support for policypractice suggests that workers do not necessar-ily see any contradiction between fostering in-dividual’s personal development and promotingsocial justice by means of policy practice.

The findings also show that social workers’social and professional values are much morestrongly associated with their support for policypractice than with their actual engagement init. Indeed, there is only a moderate, althoughsignificant, correlation between their support forpolicy practice and their engagement in it—thiseven though support for policy practice predictsengagement more than any of the other variables.

Two explanations may be offered for the dis-parity. One is the frequent disparity noted in theliterature between attitudes and behavior (Kraus,1995), which may stem from social desirabilityresponses or from the individual’s holding un-conscious or conflicting attitudes. The other isthe formidable obstacles in the way of engage-ment in policy practice. One set of obstacles in-heres in the fact that most of what social workersactually do on the job is determined by the poli-cies, requirements, and procedures of their em-ployers (Woodcock & Dixon, 2005). Both in Is-rael and elsewhere, most workplaces that employsocial workers, and especially those in the pub-

lic sector, emphasize micro- and mezzo-practiceand allow very few opportunities for policy prac-tice (Elliott, 1997; Spiro, Sherer, Korin-Langer,& Weiss, 1997). Another set of obstacles inheresin the workers themselves. It is often claimed thatmany social workers do not have the knowledge,skills, or sense of competence to engage in pol-icy practice (Keller, Whittaker, & Burke, 2001;Saulnier, 2000).

Another finding of this study is that gender,ethnicity, and religiosity contributed to variancein engagement in policy practice, although notto the variance in support for policy practice.Male, Arab, and religious social workers weremore likely to engage in policy practice thanfemale, Jewish, and nonreligious social workers,even though there were no significant differencesin the support for policy practice expressed bymales and females, by Arabs and Jews, and byreligious and nonreligious respondents.

Different explanations, all of them specula-tive, may be offered for each group. The genderdifference may be related to the fact that policypractice belongs to the public, political spheres,whereas micro- and mezzo-practice belong moreto the private spheres. It may be that male socialworkers feel more comfortable in, and are moreready to engage in, macro-level practice than fe-male workers and/or that employers are moreprone to assign macro-level work to male thanfemale workers.

The Arab–Jewish difference may be relatedto the finding that members of ethnic minori-ties, because of their personal experience ofmarginalization and social obstacles, tended tobe more committed to social work’s traditionalmission and to engage in societal or institutionalchange (Limb & Organista, 2006). Arab com-munities in Israel suffer from particularly highlevels of poverty, unemployment, and other so-cial ills, which stem, in very large measure, fromsevere, consistent, and overt structural discrimi-nation. This might make the Arab directors andpredominantly Arab staff of these agencies moreaware than their Jewish counterparts of the needfor macro-level change and more motivated touse their professional positions to promote it.

The religious–nonreligious difference is notclear and, despite growing interest into the roleof religion in social work practice (Gilligan &


Furness, 2006; Osmo & Landau, 2003), the linkbetween religious belief and practice preferenceshas not been investigated. As such, the findingmay have less to do with the actual religiosity perse of the social workers and more with some dif-ference in the social work education of religiousand nonreligious professionals in Israel. One ofthe five university-based schools of social workin Israel is situated in a university with a declaredreligious orientation, and it attracts a particu-larly high proportion of religious students. Thisschool of social work places stronger emphasisthan the other schools on education for policypractice, with a special program in communityorganization and development.

This study has three main limitations. One isthat its sample is not random, which may raisequestions about the generalizability of the find-ings. Nonetheless, the sample was fairly largeand varied. It was drawn from all of Israel’s ge-ographic areas and from a variety of agenciesserving different client groups and dealing withdiverse problems. At the same time, the distribu-tion of work places resembled that of the popula-tion of social workers in Israel (Bar-Zuri, 2004)and the sample’s gender distribution, mean age,and education were also similar to that of thecountry’s overall social worker population. Theother limitation is that all the variables were mea-sured by self-report. While self-report is an ap-propriate way of measuring attitudes, it cannotbe ruled out that it may not accurately measurethe workers’ engagement in policy practice. Be-cause of the practical difficulty of more objec-tively measuring what workers actually do, how-ever, virtually all the studies of social work prac-tice to date use self-report measures. Finally, be-cause of the fact that this study employed a cross-sectional research design, causal relationshipsamong the variables could not be examined. Lon-gitudinal studies will need to be undertaken todeal with issues such as if the attitudes of socialworkers precede their choice regarding their en-gagement in policy practice (as assumed here) orconceivably their actual engagement in this typeof practice leads to the adoption of attitudes to-ward poverty, social welfare, and the profession.

These limitations notwithstanding, the studyfindings shed light on the role of social and pro-fessional values in social workers’ support for,

and engagement in, policy practice. While thestudy examined Israeli social workers, its find-ings may well be of interest to social workersin other national settings, particularly given thepaucity of studies of this type in the literature.Engagement in policy practice remains a desir-able, but largely unfulfilled, aspiration of socialwork in different countries. This study offersempirically-based food for thought for profes-sionals and educators seeking to enhance theinvolvement of social workers in this field ofprofessional activity. In particular this study’sfindings underscore the need to enhance the un-derstanding among students and social workersof the relevance of social justice to the attain-ment of the goals of the profession. This appearsto be a crucial requisite for encouraging socialworkers to adopt this type of intervention. Inaddition, it seems that by strengthening socialworker’s structural understanding of poverty andtheir support for an enhanced role for the statein dealing with issues of inequality and redistri-bution, a greater readiness to engage in policypractice will emerge.

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Documents

Social Workers and Policy- Practice: The Role of Social and Professional Values