Personal or Environmental? Factors Affecting Social Workers’ Vicarious Trauma

• Main Authors: Chang,Hui-Ching, 張惠淨
• Other Authors: Lu,Huey-Fen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/5994n8

碩士 === 慈濟大學 === 社會工作學系碩士班 === 104 === Social work is a helping profession that addresses problems of all aspects of a person's life. Social workers may at risk of vicarious traumatization from empathic engagement with diverse traumatized clients on the job. This issue has drawn limited attention from scholarly work so far. This study explores factors that affect the risk of vicarious traumatization. The aims are 1. to understand the current state of vicarious traumatization among social workers. 2. the relationship between personal characteristics of social workers and risk of vicarious traumatization 3. the relationship between working environment and risk of vicarious traumatization. 4. the relative importance of personal characteristics and working environment in vicarious traumatization. 　　 This study used a questionnaire and the vicarious traumatization scale developed according to "The constructivist self development theory" by Zheng (Zheng 2013) to conduct a survey over the internet. A total of valid response from 168 subjects were collected. The analysis of these responses showed that: 1. Current status of vicarious traumatizationamong social workers: The 5 dimensions of the vicarious traumatization scale listed in descending order of importance are frame of reference, self capacities, ego resources, cognitive schemas, and the perception and memory system. 2. Personal characteristics in vicarious traumatization: Marrital status, education, traumatic experience and family support are significant factors.Unmarried, without a master's degree and past traumatic experience predisposethe social worker to vicarious traumatization whereas family support protects against it. These results are consistent with previous studies. 3. The environmental factors: Previous studies showed that risk of vicarious traumatization increased with work load whereas institutional support and professional training were protective. We also found location of work, work loading, help from external supervision, institutional support were significant. Taipei and New Taipei city social workers were more vulnerable. The risk increased with workload and decreased with external and institutional support. Continuing education of no more than 16 hours per month was helpful but too much continuing education was counter productive. 4. Which one is more important? Combined analysis showed that personal characteristic accounted for 8.9% of the variance of vicarious traumatization whereas environmental factors accounted for additional 24%. In conclusion, working environment is the key factor in vicarious traumatization of social workers. Adequate professional support, reasonable workload, reduce frustration and optimal continuing education can reduce the risk of vicarious traumatization.