Social Work Commons^™

Facilitating Transformation In Workforce Training: Using Clinical Theory To Understand Psychological Self-Sufficiency, Rana Hong, Terry B. Northcut, Marcia Spira, Philip Young P. Hong

Social Work: School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Other Works

Acknowledging the scarcity of a bottom up social work practice model in facilitating the development of success in workforce development programs, this study explores Psychological self-sufficiency (PSS) as an emerging social work practice theory. Phenomenological studies of low-income jobseekers in employment training along with the empirical validation of measures of the core constructs of PSS – employment hope scale (EHS) and perceived employment barrier scale (PEBS) – and testing of the theoretical model resulted in the emergence of a new theory of PSS. PSS was conceptually defined as a dynamic and internal drive that activates the process of transforming cognitively …