Professional socialization, ethical judgment and decision making orientation in social work

This cross-sectional study, which collects data at three points of time in the course of social workers’ professional socialization, aims to shed more light on the impact of professional socialization on ethical judgment and decision making orientation. Utilizing both a standard measure of ethical judgment and six vignettes to identify changes in ethical decision making orientation in social work, the findings provide no support for the hypothesis that professional socialization significantly affects the ethical judgment of either social work students or social workers. The only background variable that significantly affects the respondents’ ethical judgment is religiosity. However, the data indicating greater client orientation and, to a lesser extent, nonintervention orientation among third year than first year students suggests that social work education does have an important role in conveying central social work values.