Predictive Factors in the Initial Interview in Family Casework

Abstract

This study was undertaken as one link in a chain of studies being conducted by the Community Service Society of New York in an effort to describe and evaluate, in scientific fashion, that sometimes elusive professional activity known as social casework. The first efforts were confined to developing a reliable and valid measuring instrument that would reflect the change in the client or his situation that occurred in association with the receipt of casework help. One instrument, the Movement Scale, was found to have a high degree of reliability when applied to case summaries by qualified persons trained in its use. Also, since it was developed from the consensus of a group of experienced caseworkers, a logical argument may be made for its intrinsic validity as a measure of change in the clients of family casework agencies.2 Having achieved such a standardized measuring instrument, the research team turned to a consideration of how the scores obtained with it might be related to other variables. This particular member of the team was especially interested in the predictability of movement, and so, fortunately, were the Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation, whose grants to the agency made this study possible. Specifically, the task set was to disc ver the extent to which knowledge of certain factors, apparent or obtainable in the first interview, might enable one to pre ict the subsequent degree and direction of change that would occur in the client and/or his situation by the time the case was closed.