Social Work Commons^™

The Use Of Self-Determination And Confidentiality In Casework And Group Work Practice: An Exploratory Study, George A. Fisher, James M. Hanson, Frances Peterson, Helen Phillips

Dissertations and Theses

This study is the seventh in a series begun in 1957 to relate social work theory to general systems theory. The purpose of this study was to assess, through the judgment of professional social workers, the use of the two concepts, self-determination and confidentiality, in casework and social group work situations. The two concepts were operationalized by construction of five practice principles for each concept. An instrument was developed in which a critical hypothetical situation exemplified each principle for both methods with a forced choice of four actions evidencing the degree of self-determination and confidentiality. Forty randomly selected trained social …