A Study of Predictors of Success in Health Visiting and Social Work

Abstract

With expanding courses of training for health visitors and social workers, there is an urgent need to investigate the predictors of success in these fields. The present study was designed: (a) to investigate cognitive and non-cognitive test differences between health visitor and social work students; (b) to devise a measure to facilitate the assessment of practical work for the two groups; and (c) to examine the relationship between a variety of predictor measures and theoretical and practical criteria. The subjects consisted of 88 health visitor students and 81 social work students who began their professional courses in a college of further education in 1968 or 1969. At the beginning of their courses a variety of cognitive and noncognitive tests was administered to the students who also answered a comprehensive questionnaire. Two types of criteria were used. The first was based on theoretical course and examination performance while the second constituted an assessment of practical work in an agency. The health visitors' practical ability was assessed one year after completing their training and the social work students were rated at the end of their two year course when they had completed a six months' agency placement. For the health visitors the most effective and consistent predictors of the theoretical criterion were a reading comprehension test and their school leaving qualifications. The practical criterion proved difficult to predict, not one single variable correlating significantly and consistently with it. For the social workers the validities of the predictor variables were generally higher. As with the health visitors, the reading comprehension test and school leaving examinations effectively predicted the theoretical criterion, but other cognitive tests and a questionnaire measure were also successful. Ability on the practical criterion was best predicted by the measure of persistence.