Читать книгу Social Work Research Methods - Reginald O. York - Страница 124

While there are numerous sources of literature on what cultural competence means, why it is important, and how we can demonstrate it in our agencies, there is very little literature regarding the measurement of it. A question that arises for social work is whether social workers are culturally competent. The following paragraphs report on one such study.

Hall (2009) conducted a dissertation that focused on predictors of cultural competence among Masters of Social Work (MSW) students. While she found a number of studies showing that training in cultural competence achieves its learning objectives, she failed to find studies that answered the question of whether social workers (or students) are culturally competent at a reasonable level. This dissertation reported the results of a study of cultural competence among MSW students and recent graduates of MSW programs. A national sample of 186 persons participated. It was found that MSW students and recent graduates had high scores on cultural competence as measured by the Multicultural Competence Inventory. Students in various stages of matriculation (foundation year, advanced year, and recent graduates) were found to have similar levels of cultural competence. One might conclude from this discovery that schools of social work recruit people with high cultural competence.

Another discovery by Hall (2009) was that the personal characteristics of the MSW students were not related to the scores for cultural competence. Educational variables also failed to be related to this competence. One might conclude from the data that persons who enter social work education program tend to possess a high level of cultural competence and that this characteristic tends to be rather uniform, among different types of people.