Do You Know Where Your Students Are? Uncovering Bias Toward Poverty and Homelessness Among Social Work Students

The social work profession is committed to addressing issues of social, economic, racial, and environmental injustice, which includes efforts to mitigate poverty and related issues such as homelessness and housing instability. Integral to this goal is graduating undergraduate and graduate social work students with attitudes toward these issues that align with the social work values. However, developing effective educational strategies requires first understanding students’ current attitudes. The data presented here come from a survey of 100 BSW and MSW students from a School of Social Work in a state-related university in the northeast region of the United States. The survey measured attitudes toward homelessness and poverty, as well as student background characteristics. Overall, student attitudes toward poverty were consistently aligned with social work values while attitudes toward homelessness were more varied. Some demographic differences were found, especially for attitudes toward homelessness, including less favorable attitudes among nonwhite students and more favorable attitudes among advanced year MSW students (compared to BSW and foundation-year MSW students). Implications for social work education are discussed, such as incorporating modules on poverty and/or homelessness in core courses and offering educational experiences (e.g. classes, practicum education experiences) that focus specifically on one or both topics.