Human rights in social work. Validation of instruments for measuring the level of involvement and exposure of social workers to human rights. Adaptation of Human Rights Engagement in Social Work and Human Rights Exposure in Social Work scales in Poland

Abstract

The article aims to present the results of research on the use of standardised tools that measure the level of commitment and exposure to human rights of social workers and social work students. The research was based on the adaptation procedure of two separate scales – Human Rights Engagement in Social Work and Human Rights Exposure in Social Work – to Polish cultural background and linguistic environment. The first part discusses issues related to the importance of human rights in social work, up-to-date status human rights-based social work perspective and a literature review in this area. The research part presents the procedure and discusses the results of theoretical validity and reliability tests. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was obtained at the level of .877 and .845, which indicates a high level of internal compatibility. It was not possible to determine the nature of the regularities shaping the relationships between the variables, items of the scale In the case of the Human Rights Engagement in Social Work scale the exploratory factor analysis (Varimax rotation) made it possible to identify five factors explaining 51.9% of the variability. In the case of the Scale of Human Rights Engagement in Social Work, the exploratory factor analysis allowed for the identification of five factors explaining 58% of the variance of variables. In the case of Human Rights Exposure in Social Work, factor analysis made it possible to identify three factors explaining 65% of variances. Then, an attempt was made to interpret the results and the perspective of the potential application of scales over theattitudes of social workers and students of social work was presented. Polish versions of the scales were also described. The results of the analysis of the Polish version of the scales indicate that they are reliable and possess theoretical accuracy, thus allow for measuring the level of engagement and exposure to human rights knowledge in the field of social work.