Is Discrimination Against Evangelical Christians a Problem in Social Work Education?

Abstract

This article reviews the literature regarding discrimination by social work practitioners and educators against evangelical Christian social workers. We examine the methodology of articles that compare religiosity and political ideology between social workers and the general population and also of articles that address discrimination against evangelical Christians in social work education. Our results indicate that there are limited studies to support arguments that such discrimination exists and that these studies have significant methodological weaknesses. We conclude that the claims about social work and social workers discriminating against evangelical Christians are not supported by a sufficient body of rigorous research.

Notes

¹ Hodge (2003a) reported another method of determining effect size. This method assumed that a 10-percentile difference between groups is substantive (e.g., if 60% of voters are female and 40% are male, there is a 20-percentile difference). This method does not take into consideration the small sample size for social workers and relies on an assumption that a difference of 10 percentage points between groups is, indeed, substantive. Rosenthal (1996) challenged this assumption, stating that this method might be helpful for laypersons but does not have mathematical properties that allow it to be interpreted exactly. Therefore, we use Cramer's V in this article to discuss effect sizes.