Social workers’ intention to hold elected political office: a quantitative study based on the theory of planned behavior

ABSTRACT

Social work is closely intertwined with formal and informal policy processes and social workers, in line with the global definition of social work as well as national codes of ethics, are called upon to act as policy actors at various levels. One possible way to do this is to hold elected political office. This quantitative cross-sectional study examines the intention of 92 Swiss social workers to hold elected political office at the local, cantonal, or national level and uses the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to identify factors associated with their intention. The findings show that social workers’ intention is strongly associated with the core factors of the TPB – attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. Based on the study’s findings, this article outlines avenues for further research and suggests possible strategies to enhance the policy role of social workers, specifically addressing social work education, professional associations of social work, and social welfare organisations.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Soziale Arbeit ist eng mit formellen und informellen politischen Prozessen verbunden. Sozialarbeitende sind entsprechend gemäss der globalen Definition Sozialer Arbeit sowie nationalen Berufskodizes dazu aufgerufen, sich als politische Akteur:innen auf verschiedenen Ebenen einzumischen. Eine Möglichkeit, diesem Aufruf nachzukommen, besteht darin, ein gewähltes politisches Amt zu bekleiden. Diese quantitative Querschnittsstudie untersucht die Absicht von 92 Sozialarbeitenden in der Schweiz, ein politisches Amt auf lokaler, kantonaler oder nationaler Ebene auszuüben, und verwendet die Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens (Theory of Planned Behavior, TPB), um Faktoren zu identifizieren, die mit dieser Absicht in Verbindung stehen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Absicht von Sozialarbeitenden stark mit den Kernfaktoren der TPB – Einstellungen, subjektive Norm und wahrgenommene Verhaltenskontrolle – verbunden ist. Ausgehend von den Ergebnissen der Studie werden in diesem Artikel Anregungen für weitere Forschungstätigkeiten gegeben. Darüber hinaus werden mögliche Strategien zur Stärkung politischer Sozialer Arbeit skizziert, die insbesondere die Soziale Arbeit in Form von Ausbildung, Berufsverbänden und Praxiseinrichtungen in den Blick nehmen.

KEYWORDS:

• Holding elected political office
• policy engagement
• policy practice
• social work
• theory of planned behavior

SCHLÜSSELWÖRTER:

• Politisches Mandat
• politisches Engagement
• Policy Practice
• Soziale Arbeit
• Theorie des geplanten Verhaltens

Introduction

A glance at the historical literature shows how social work was already politically conceptualised and lived by its pioneers. Even today, social work and social policy making are closely interrelated (Dischler & Kulke, 2021; Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2023; Klammer et al., 2020; Lane & Pritzker, 2018). The global definition of social work (IASSW & IFSW, 2014) as well as various codes of ethics (e.g. AvenirSocial, 2010; BASW, 2021; NASW, 2017) and professional theories and frameworks (Grunwald & Thiersch, 2004; Staub-Bernasconi, 2007, 2012; Thiersch, 2000) emphasise the political mandate of social work. The Swiss professional association, AvenirSocial (2010) defines the initiation of social policy interventions as a core task of social work. In its code of ethics, AvenirSocial even calls upon social workers to make use of their civic resources in their free time to fight for a democratic and socially just society, e.g. by voting or demonstrating. There are different ways for social workers to respond to this call and to engage in policy: On an abstract level, Gal and Weiss-Gal (2023) distinguish between policy engagement of social workers as private citizens and policy practice as part of their job (see also Weiss-Gal, 2017a). On a more practical level, they further differentiate this twofold distinction into six pathways, which are: Policy practice, academic policy practice, policy involvement by professional organisations, and street-level policy involvement on the professional route and voluntary political participation and holding elected political office on the civic route. This article focuses on one of these very specific forms of policy engagement on the civic route, namely ‘holding elected political office’.

An ideal place to examine this strategy of policy engagement is Switzerland, with its unique federal and direct democratic political institutions (Kehl, 2023; Kindler, 2023; Linder & Mueller, 2021; Vatter, 2018). In this country, Swiss citizens – and thus a majority of Swiss social workers – have the right to run for political elections at the local, cantonal (state), and national levels. Switzerland’s 26 parliaments at cantonal level alone consist of a total of 2821 members. In accordance with the militia system – a typically Swiss political institution based on the ‘idea of volunteering one’s time to perform political and social tasks communities need’ (Ladner, 2019, p. 13) – all of these members of the cantonal parliaments are active as politicians in addition to their main occupation in various professional fields. The most frequently mentioned job titles in the 2019 cantonal state calendars were: Lawyer (242 persons; 9%), farmer (228; 8%), business manager (189; 7%), economist (185; 7%), teacher (175; 6%) or engineer (132; 5%). Compared to the members of these professions, social workers (40; 1%) represent only a relatively small group (Amann & Kindler, 2021). Based on this observation and the underlying assumption that greater participation of social workers in formal political decision-making processes is crucial to represent the needs of social work service users and practitioners, this study aims to identify factors associated with social workers’ intention to hold elected political office.

State of the research and purpose of the study

While previous research on social workers’ policy engagement has focused more on their voluntary political participation (Kindler, 2021), more recent scholarship also examines the route of ‘holding elected office’ (Weiss-Gal, 2017b). Empirical research on social workers running for and holding elected office exists for Canada (Greco, 2020; McLaughlin et al., 2019), Germany (Leitner & Stolz, 2022; Löffler, 2023), Israel (Binder & Weiss-Gal, 2022), Switzerland (Amann, 2019; Amann & Kindler, 2021, 2022a; Kindler & Amann, 2022), the United Kingdom (Gwilym, 2017), and the United States (Lane, 2008, 2011; Lane & Humphreys, 2011, 2015; Meehan, 2018, 2019a, 2019b, 2021; Miller et al., 2021; Pence & Kaiser, 2022).

These studies show that social workers’ motivation to run for and hold political office is strongly influenced by social work education, social work practice (Binder & Weiss-Gal, 2022; Greco, 2020; Gwilym, 2017), gender (Lane & Humphreys, 2015; Meehan, 2018), age (Meehan, 2018) family background, biographical experiences (Gwilym, 2017; McLaughlin et al., 2019), social networks, and membership in professional associations (Amann & Kindler, 2022a, 2022b; Binder & Weiss-Gal, 2022; Lane & Humphreys, 2011). Additional research traces the career paths of social workers after they become professional politicians (Leitner & Stolz, 2022) and examines the policy engagement strategies of social workers who hold elected office (Kindler & Amann, 2022).

Previous studies have mostly used the Civic Voluntarism Model (Schlozman et al., 2018; Verba et al., 1995) to explain social workers’ motivation to run for and hold office. This model was established in the field of political science and draws on available resources, political attitudes and ideologies, and membership in mobilisation networks as the main factors influencing an individual’s decision to participate in politics. Studies based on this model, while providing valuable insights, almost all neglect the fact that social workers’ motivation to run for and hold political office might also be associated with psychological and personal factors such as attitudes, norms, or self-efficacy. To address this conceptual gap in previous research, this study uses the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991) to examine social workers’ intention to run for elected political office.

Theoretical background and hypotheses

In this study, the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) developed by Ajzen (1991) is used to identify factors associated with social workers’ intention to hold elected political office. The TPB was originally developed to predict human behaviour and to capture the motivational factors associated with this specific behaviour. The underlying premise of the theory is that actual human behaviour is strongly linked to behavioural intention: The stronger a person’s intention to engage in a particular behaviour, the more likely that person is to engage in that behaviour (Ajzen, 1996; Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010).

The TPB proposes that behavioural intention is influenced by the following three main determinants: Attitudes toward the respective behaviour, subjective norms, and perceived behavioural control (Fishbein & Ajzen, 2010). Previous research has successfully used the TPB to predict planned political behaviour and actual policy engagement in general (e.g. Curnalia & Mermer, 2013; Eckstein et al., 2013; Glasford, 2008; Wolfsfeld, 1986). The first variable, attitudes, is conceptualised as a general affective evaluation of a particular behaviour and refers to the extent to which a person views the behaviour as positive or negative (Ajzen, 1991). Earlier studies have shown that attitudes and intention to engage in policy are interrelated, for example, in a study focusing on political participation among young adults (Eckstein et al., 2013).

Second, subjective norm goes beyond the individual level and takes into account their social environment. Here, researchers are interested in whether important social contacts, such as friends, family, etc., expect the person to perform a certain behaviour or not, and to what extent such expectations influence the respondent’s intention (Graf, 2007). Existing studies have shown that the subjective norm factor influences the intention to participate in politics, for example, in the specific areas of activism (Fielding et al., 2008) and politically motivated boycotts (Delistavrou, 2022).

Third, perceived behavioural control measures a person’s perception of how easy or difficult it is to perform a particular behaviour under certain circumstances or conditions (Ajzen, 1996). Previous research has also supported the hypothesis that perceived behavioural control affects an individual’s intention to engage in policy. This relationship has been examined in studies focusing on general political activity in general (Al-Mohammad, 2017), online political participation (Triwibowo, 2018), or voting behaviour (Reichert, 2016).

In addition to these three main determinants, socio-demographic variables such as age, gender, caregiving responsibilities, or marital status may indirectly influence people’s behavioural intention (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980, 2005). Based on these assumptions of the TPB, the study tests the following hypotheses: Social workers’ intention to hold elected political office is positively associated with their (1) attitude, (2) subjective norm, and (3) perceived behavioural control toward holding elected political office.

Methods

Study design, data collection, and sample

This study focuses on the population of Swiss social workers. In the absence of a national register, it is estimated that there are 90,000 social workers in Switzerland (Kindler & Kulke, 2022; Ostrander et al., 2021). Just over 3,900 of them, all with a degree in social work, are members of the Swiss professional association, AvenirSocial (2023). AvenirSocial is organised into nine regional chapters. Based on a quantitative cross-sectional research design, an online questionnaire was distributed among all 440 members of one of these chapters, the Eastern Switzerland regional chapter. This chapter consists of members working in the cantons of St.Gallen, Thurgau, Appenzell Innerrhoden and Ausserrhoden, Glarus and the Principality of Liechtenstein. The survey was self-administered and voluntary. It was conducted in May and June 2022. Participants gave their consent to participate in the study through an online form at the beginning of the survey. The survey was conducted using Unipark, an online survey tool. The initial invitation as well as an additional reminder were sent by email by the board of the Eastern Switzerland regional chapter of the professional association to ensure the privacy of the participants.

The initial sample consisted of 102 participants, which represents a response rate of 23 percent. Ten participants indicated that they are currently holding an elected political office (most of them at the local level), another eight respondents indicated that they have held office in the past (most of them at local level), and another seven respondents ran for elected office in the past (most of them at local and state level). For the purposes of this study, participants who currently hold an elected political office were excluded from the analysis, resulting in a total sample of 92 respondents. The average age of the participants is 39 years (SD = 12.7). Table 1 shows more detailed demographic characteristics, all of which all are consistent with the demographics of the population of AvenirSocial’s Eastern Switzerland regional chapter.

Table 1. Demographic characteristics of the sample.

Variable	N	%
Gender
Male	23	25.0
Female	66	71.7
Diverse	1	1.1
No answer	2	2.2
Age
21–30 years	32	34.7
31–40 years	26	28.3
41–50 years	10	10.9
> 50 years	24	26.1
Marital status
Single/unmarried	47	51.1
Separated/divorced	7	7.6
Married/partnered	38	41.3
Children aged < 18 Years
Yes	74	80.4
No	18	19.6
Social work education
Currently studying	12	13.0
Academic college	11	12.0
BSW	48	52.1
MSW	18	19.6
Other	3	3.3

Data analysis

Confirmatory factor analysis was used to verify the measurement model developed for this study using covariance and maximum likelihood estimation method in IBM SPSS Amos version 26. IBM SPSS Statistics version 28 was then used to further analyze the data. Descriptive statistical methods were used to provide a description of the sample. To test the three research hypotheses, multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine the effects of attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control on social workers’ intention to hold elected political office.

Measurement tools

Respondents’ intention to hold elected political office was measured using the intention scale, which consists of the following three items: ‘I tend … ’, ‘I will try … ’, and ‘I plan to hold political office at the local, cantonal, or national level in the course of my career as a social worker.’ Participants were asked to indicate their response on a 7-point scale, with endpoints marked 1 = totally disagree and 7 = totally agree. The intention scale was calculated as the mean of these items (α = .96).

To measure participants’ attitudes towards the behaviour of holding elected office, they were presented with a list of three pairs of contradictory adjectives. The contradicting adjectives were the endpoints of a 7-point scale and respondents were asked to indicate which adjectives better reflected their attitude towards holding elected political office. The adjective pairs were: bad/good, worthless/valuable, useless/useful. Participants were asked to indicate their answers on a 7-point scale (only endpoints were labelled: negative attitude = 1, positive attitude = 7). The attitude scale was calculated as the mean of these items, with 1 representing a strongly negative attitude and 7 representing a strongly positive attitude towards the behaviour of holding elected office (α = .86).

Respondents’ subjective norm was measured on the subjective norm scale, consisting of the following three items: ‘My family … ’, ‘My friends … ’, and ‘My colleagues want me to hold elected political office in the course of my career as a social worker.’ Participants were asked to indicate their response on a 7-point scale, with endpoints labelled as 1 = totally disagree and 7 = totally agree. The subjective norm scale was calculated as the mean of these items (α = .80).

To measure participants’ perceived behavioural control, they were asked to rate the following two statements on a 7-point scale: ‘I can hold political office if I wish to do so’, and ‘To me, holding political office seems possible.’ Participants were asked to indicate their answers on a 7-point scale, with endpoints labelled as 1 = totally disagree and 7 = totally agree. The perceived behavioural control scale was calculated as the mean of these items (α = .72).

To control for socio-demographic characteristics, respondents were asked to indicate their age, gender identity, caregiving responsibilities, and marital status. Furthermore, the questionnaire included items measuring the educational and professional background of the participants. In addition to the intention to hold elected political office, the actual and previous experience of running for and holding elected office was also recorded.

Measurement model

The measurement tools developed for this study, described above, were tested for validity using goodness-of-fit measures and examining factor loadings. The goodness of fit values obtained through confirmatory factor analysis (χ2 = 52.409, p = .060, df = 38, χ2/df = 1.379, Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) = .969, Comparative Fit Index (CFI) = .978, Root-Mean-Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) = .065) indicate that the measurement model fits the data well (Hair et al., 2019; Schermelleh-Engel & Moosbrugger, 2003). All factor loadings were greater than .55.

Limitations

The study is subject to at least two limitations. First, the sample consists of members of the professional association in one specific regional chapter in Eastern Switzerland. Any generalisation to the overall population of social workers must therefore take this limitation of the sample into account. And second, possible self-selection effects such as high workloads or strong political interest must be taken into account.

Findings

Descriptive statistics

The intention to hold elected political office during one’s career in social work was constructed as the dependent variable, while the TPB variables – attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control – were constructed as independent variables in this research. Both the dependent and independent variables were measured on scales ranging from 1 to 7. Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations as well as Pearson correlations between the study variables.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics and intercorrelations (N = 92).

Measure	Mean	SD	1	2	3	4
1. Intention	2.92	1.63	1
2. Attitudes	5.05	1.10	.50***	1
3. Subjective norm	3.30	1.31	.49***	.37***	1
4. Perceived behavioural control	4.67	1.41	.41***	.35***	.47***	1

Note. All scales ranging from 1–7.

*** p < .001

Multivariate analysis

Table 3 shows the results of the multiple linear regression analysis identifying the factors associated with social workers’ intention to hold elected political office. The strongest factor is age (β = −.46, p < .001), followed by attitudes (β = .27, p = .001), subjective norm (β = .23, p = .009), and perceived behavioural control (β = .18, p = .043). Together, these variables explain 52 percent of the variance in respondents’ intention to hold elected office. Gender (β = −.10, p = .204), marital status (β = −.001, p = .990) and caregiving responsibilities for children under the age of 18 (β = .14, p = .115) are not significant.

Table 3. Multiple regression results for intention to hold political office (N = 89).

Variable	B	95% CI	SE B	β
Constant	1.22	[−1.75, 4.20]	1.49
Attitudes	0.39***	[0.16, 0.62]	0.12	.27
Subjective norm	0.28**	[0.07, 0.48]	0.10	.23
Perceived behavioural control	0.21*	[0.01, 0.42]	0.10	.18
Age	−0.06***	[−0.08, −0.04]	0.01	−.46
Gender	−0.37	[−0.93, 0.20]	0.29	−.10
Marital status	−0.004	[−0.64, 0.64]	0.32	.001
Children < 18	0.56	[−0.14, 1.25]	0.35	.14

Note. Adjusted R² = .524. CI = confidence interval [lower limit, upper limit].

*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to better understand social workers’ intention to hold elected political office. Our aim was to test whether the assumptions of the TPB could explain not only general political activity and intention (e.g. Curnalia & Mermer, 2013; Eckstein et al., 2013; Glasford, 2008), but also the very specific behavioural intention to hold elected political office among social workers. In response to the research hypotheses outlined above, the results of the regression analysis show how the main components of the TPB – attitudes, perceived behavioural control, and subjective norm – are positively associated with social workers’ intention to hold elected political office, and therefore suggest confirmation of all three hypotheses:

The more pronounced respondents’ attitudes, the stronger their intention to hold elected political office; this finding is consistent with similar studies that have found strong correlations between social workers’ political attitudes and their actual policy engagement (Kulke & Schmidt, 2019; Ritter, 2008). Based on these findings, social work education and professional social work associations should strive to conceptualise and systematize the political dimensions of social work, e.g. by ‘normalizing policy engagement’ (Kindler & Amann, 2022) within the social work profession. Only when social work students and social workers understand the crucial link between social work and political arenas and integrate it into their attitudes can they fully appreciate the importance of their contribution to policymaking processes.

The more pronounced respondents’ perceived behavioural control, the stronger their intention to hold elected political office; this result confirms the findings of previous studies focusing on internal political efficacy. This research has shown how social workers’ and social work students’ confidence in their own abilities and skills has a major impact on their intention and willingness to engage in policy (Kindler & Ostrander, 2022; Schwartz-Tayri, 2021; Weiss-Gal & Gal, 2020). As with social workers’ attitudes towards policy and policy engagement, their perceived behavioural control can be enhanced through educational means in social work education and professional associations (Hill et al., 2019; Lane et al., 2018; Ostrander et al., 2017). In German-speaking countries in particular, policy practice and engagement are not yet a widely recognised part of syllabi (Burzlaff, 2022; Kachel, 2022; Schmidbauer & Kachel, 2023) and could therefore be strengthened to motivate more social workers to engage in policymaking and, in particular, to run for elected political office. Social work educators who wish to integrate policy engagement in their seminars can draw on inspiring material from Germany (Burzlaff, 2022; Rieger & Wurtzbacher, 2020), Israel (Weiss et al., 2006; Weiss-Gal & Peled, 2007; Weiss-Gal & Savaya, 2012) or the United States (Lane & Pritzker, 2018; Ritter, 2022).

The more pronounced respondents’ subjective norm, the stronger their intention to hold elected political office; this result is in line with the findings of similar research that has shown that social workers’ actual policy engagement is strongly influenced and sometimes even recruited by friends, families, colleagues, and employers (Amann, 2019; Amann & Kindler, 2022a; Felderhoff et al., 2016; Lane & Humphreys, 2011, 2015). While the support of friends and families cannot be directly influenced by the social work profession, the behaviour of colleagues and employers can be affected to some extent by professional discourse and regulations. It has been shown that ‘organizational facilitation’ and organisational culture (Gal & Weiss-Gal, 2023) play crucial roles in whether social workers are facilitated or hindered in participating in policymaking processes. Therefore, social work organisations could be encouraged and motivated to reflect more systematically on their role in facilitating or disabling their staff’s political engagement, e.g. in running for elected political office.

The results of the regression analysis suggest that, in addition to the main components of the TPB, age is associated with social workers’ intention to hold elected political office. The age factor has a negative effect on respondents’ intention to hold elected political office, i.e. for each additional year of age, the intention decreases by 0.06 on the intention scale from 0 to 7. This finding is in line with the results of Meehan (2018), who found a significant correlation between age and the interest in running for local office among social workers. Although this negative correlation is not much of a surprise, it can provide guidance for the further professionalisation of social work: If social workers are expected, in line with the global definition and national codes of ethics of social work, to engage in various forms of policy engagement, including running for and holding elected office, they should be motivated and trained to do so at a young age, preferably as part of their studies.

To summarise, the findings of this study support the assumptions of the TPB and show that this theory is suitable for assessing a very specific form of social workers’ political intention, namely the intention to hold elected political office. Further research is needed to examine the relationship between social workers’ intention to hold elected political office and their actual behaviour. Only then will we have a fuller picture of why and how social workers intend to and do hold elected political office. Finally, the TPB could also be used – in combination with other frameworks such as the CVM – to further explore additional routes of social workers’ policy engagement, such as (academic) policy practice, policy involvement by professional organisations, street-level policy involvement, and voluntary political participation.

Conclusion

This study adds to the body of knowledge about social workers’ policy engagement and, in particular, on their intention to hold elected political office. While previous scholarship in this field is not based on any specific theoretical model or the Civic Voluntarism Model, our study uses the TPB to provide evidence for the importance of psychological factors, i.e. attitudes, subjective norm, and perceived behavioural control. Together with the socio-demographic characteristics studied, these independent variables explain a total of 52 percent of the variation in the intention to hold elected political office. Further research, e.g. integrating different theoretical models such as the CVM and the TPB, is needed to move beyond simple intention and include actual behaviour as an additional variable. If social work is understood as a profession that is closely intertwined with formal and informal policymaking processes, the policy role of social workers should be further strengthened. This article suggests possible ways to do this by specifically addressing social work education, professional associations of social work, and social work organisations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The language proofreading of this article has been financially supported by the DGSA – German Association of Social Work (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Soziale Arbeit). The authors appreciate this support. Tobias Kindler acknowledges the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the funding of his research provided through a Doc.CH grant [grant number 207259].

Notes on contributors

Selin Demircali

Selin Demircali holds a master’s degree in social work from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW) and works as a social worker at the social services of the City of Zurich.

Tobias Kindler

Tobias Kindler (MSW) is a research associate at the Institute of Social Work and Social Spaces at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST) and a PhD student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Kathrin Amann

Kathrin Amann (MSW) works as a research associate at the Institute of Social Work and Social Spaces at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST).