Assessing Clinical MSW Students' Attitudes, Attributions, and Responses to Poverty

The choices social workers make to assist people in poverty may be attributable to the attitudes they bring to their social work education but might also be attributable to the explanations for poverty they learned during their programs. This study surveyed 337 students in a clinical MSW program about their attitudes toward the poor, attributions for poverty, and beliefs regarding models of interventions regarding poverty. Students preferred structural attributions for poverty over individual attributions for poverty. They also strongly endorsed structural responses but simultaneously endorsed psychological responses. Future research should investigate students’ connections between attitudes towards the poor, attributions for poverty and beliefs regarding intervention responses.