Baccalaureate Student Perceptions of Challenging Family Problems: Building Bridges to Acceptance

Abstract

This study explored the attitudes of 147 undergraduate social work majors to working with difficult families. Students indicated which problems (from a list of 42, including hot topics such as homosexuality, transgender issues, abortion, and substance abuse) they believed they would find most difficult to work with and provided information regarding their own experience with these problems (personal or family, knowing of others with this situation, and no previous knowledge). Student reactions emerged in three qualitative domains: affective, cognitive, and experiential. Affective reactions tended to be strong and were reported in regard to issues such as abortion, religious differences, and abuse. Cognitive reactions tended to be categorized as “not knowing how” to work with the client or lack of training, while experiential reactions related to either personal experience or, the converse, no experience with the population. A better understanding of the nature of student barriers to working with particular family problems is useful for developing approaches that can reduce this reluctance through more inclusive educational experiences.

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