Social welfare professionals willing to participate in client information system development – Results from a large cross-sectional survey

ABSTRACT

Human-centered design methods should be implemented throughout the client information system (CIS) development process to understand social welfare professionals’ needs, tasks, and contexts of use. The aim of this study was to examine Finnish social welfare professionals’ experiences of participating in CIS development.

A national cross-sectional web-based survey on the CIS experiences of social welfare professionals (1145 respondents) was conducted in Finland in spring 2019. This study focused on statements concerning the experiences of end users with CIS development and participation. The results are reported by professional and age groups.

Half (50%) of the 1145 respondents had participated in CIS development. Half (56%) knew to whom and how to send feedback to software developers, but most (87%) indicated that changes and corrections were not made according to suggestions and quickly enough. The most preferred methods of participation were telling a person in charge of information systems development about usage problems (53%) and showing developers on site how professionals work (34%); 19% were not interested in participating.

Social welfare professionals are willing to participate in CIS development, but vendors and social welfare provider organizations are underutilizing this resource. Social welfare informaticists are needed to interpret the needs of end users to software developers.

KEYWORDS:

• Human-centered design
• information systems
• social welfare professionals
• social care
• social work
• client information system
• it system development
• participatory methods
• survey
• informaticist

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to Professor Sanna Hautala for guidance in the design of the survey. We thank the Talentia Union of Professional Social Workers, the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors, and the Finnish Society of Social Work Research for kindly sending questionnaire links.

Authors’ contributions

Susanna Martikainen (PhD) had the main responsibility for the manuscript. Tinja Lääveri (MD, PhD) had the main responsibility for the statistical analysis. All authors contributed to all parts of the article, including interpretation of the data and approval of the manuscript. In addition, the authors Martikainen, Salovaara, Ylönen, Tyllinen, Viitanen, and Lääveri contributed to the design of the survey study.

Disclosure statement

Martikainen has been previously employed by one of the CIS software vendors included in the study. Lääveri, Salovaara and Tyllinen are/have been employed by a CIS software vendor not included in the study. The employer did not provide any support, financial or otherwise, for the study. Moreover, the vendor was not involved in the design of the study or in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed on the publisher’s website.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.