The World View of Clinical Social Workers and Some Related Gender Differences

Abstract

This paper considers the locus of control reported by a national sample of clinical social workers, and compares their scores with those reported by a national representative sample. On all three scales, Personal Control, Control Ideology, and Internal- External Locus of Control, the social work sample is somewhat more external than the national representative sample. When gender comparisons were made, the female social workers were significantly more internal than the male social workers. Since these findings are contrary to expectations and prior research, some speculative observations are made.