Personal versus Environmental Emphases in Social Workers' Perceptions of Client Problems

Abstract

Differential emphases in social workers' formulation of the locus of client problems that favor personal over interpersonal or environmental conception was investigated with 176 social workers from 12 agencies. Workers' responses to a standardized client intake summary were found to markedly favor personal problems at the expense of interpersonal and environmental. Workers also identified more personal and fewer interpersonal and environmental problems compared to the responses of an expert panel to the same case summary. Overemphasis on personal problems by workers was positively related to a psychodynamic orientation to treatment and negatively related to a planned and purposeful approach to treatment. The claim that it is a manifestation of "blaming the client" was examined and rejected. Instead, it was hypothesized that the overemphasis on personal problems shows workers' preferences for theoretically based and inferential diagnostic reasoning rather than for empirically grounded, clinical judgments.

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