Suchergebnisse

Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify the underlying dimensions of professional suitability. Method: Data were collected from a province-wide mail-out questionnaire surveying 341 participants from a random sample of registered social workers. Results: The use of an exploratory factor analysis identified a 5-factor solution on professional suitability: social consciousness suitability, ethical suitability, practice suitability, and personal suitability, and distractors. This factor solution accounted for 47.4% of variance and achieved strong internal consistency with an overall Cronbach's α value of .89, and subscales values ranged between .89 and .72. Conclusion: The identified underlying dimensions of professional suitability provide groundwork for the development of a psychometrically sound instrument for assessing performance of social work students and/or practicing social workers.

Objective: This article presents a validation study to examine the factor structure of an instrument designed to measure professional suitability for social work practice. Method: Data were collected from registered social workers in a provincial mailed survey. The response rate was 23.2%. After eliminating five cases with multivariate outliers, confirmatory factor analysis using maximum likelihood estimation was performed on 285 cases. Results: A 22-item four-factor model achieved an acceptable good fit. Reliability testing results indicate an overall Cronbach's α valued at .90 and subscale αs ranged between .75 and .89. Conclusion: Findings affirm good-to-excellent internal consistency of the Professional Suitability scale with two previous studies and provide acceptable results on construct validity.

Through a secondary data analysis of administrative data of the Ontario Disability Support Program (ODSP) between 2003 and 2013, we aim to understand the interlocking challenges encountered by newcomers with disabilities in Canada that contribute to this population's financial hardship. Our findings show that newcomers with disabilities on ODSP were more likely to have post-secondary education, to be older adults, to be married, common-law, and to be female who were divorced, separated, or widowed as compared to Canadian-born recipients, who were more likely to be less educated, younger, single and male. The ratio of Canadian-born to newcomer recipients on the ODSP was high between 2003 and 2013, indicating that the latter were under-represented on the program. Implications for this under-representation support future research to examine the full integration and participation of newcomers with disabilities in Canada.