Extended abstract Introduction Throughout history and across the globe, social workers have focused their efforts on addressing issues of poverty and social deprivation. In practice, the majority of social services clients are individuals living in poverty and suffering from the consequences of economic problems (Weiss & Gal, 2007). The way social workers perceive social problems significantly influences their understanding of these issues and shapes their intervention strategies for addressing or resolving them (Schwartz & Robinson, 1991). Attitudes are significant determinants of people’s behaviors. Taking accountof the relationship between attitudes and behaviors is essential, a wide range of attitudes to social issues have been studied (Cozzarelli et al., 2001). The first scale to measure the attitude towards poverty was developed by Patterson in 1967 (Patterson & Hulton, 2012). Many other scales were designed and used to measure the attitude towards poverty (Alston & Dean, 1972; Bullock, 1999, 2004; Furnham, 1982; Furnham & Gunter, 1984; Grimm & Orten, 1973; MacDonald Jr, 1971; Reeser & Epstein, 1987); however, the most common of such scales was developed by Atherton (1993) with three dimensions of individual deficiency, labels and structural approach, which were used in seven studies (Lavender-Bratcher et al., 2017; Patterson & Hulton, 2012; Yun & Weaver, 2010). Over years, a few researchers around the world have investigated the attitudes of practicing social workers (Bullock, 1995; Hendrickson & Axelson, 1985; Reeser & Epstein, 1987; Rehner et al., 1997) and social work students(Cryns, 1977; Grimm & Orten, 1973; Macarov, 1977; Roff et al., 1984; Schwartz & Robinson, 1991; Sun, 2001; Weiss & Gal, 2007; Weiss et al., 2002; Woodcock & Dixon, 2005) towards poverty. All of these studies have examined four categories of factors: individual, psychological, structural, and fateful. However, two factors are common across all these studies: the social structure, which a person has very little control over, and individual factors, such as motivation and effort (Weiss & Gal, 2007). The present study was designed to translate, adapt, and standardize the Persian version of the questionnaire assessing the attitudes of practicing social workers and social work students toward poverty, as well as to compare their attitudes in Iran in the year 1400. (March 21, 2021 – March 21, 2022). Method This research was of a methodological and validation type with a cross-sectional descriptive design that was conducted on March 21, 2021 – March 21, 2022. The statistical population included 450 students and practicing social workers who participated in the study through convenience sampling. Demographic information checklist and Atherton’s Attitudes Toward Poverty Short Form (1993) were used to collect data. The translation and standardization of the test according to the Iranian culture was carried out based on the International Quality of Life Assessment or IQOLA standard agreement (27). In the quantitative analysis of content validity, two indicators of CVR (content validity ratio) and CVI (content validity index) were used. Construct validity was established through exploratory factor analysis (EFA) conducted on a sample of 221 individuals, followed by confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) involving 229 participants. To evaluate the model fit, various indices were employed, including chi-square statistics, degrees of freedom for the chi-square, root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA), goodness of fit index (GFI), normalized fit index (NFI) and comparative fit index (CFI). To assess reliability using the test-retest method and the intra-cluster correlation coefficient (ICC), 17 participants completed the Persian version of the Attitudes to Poverty questionnaire on two separate occasions, spaced two weeks apart. The ICC test determined the correlation between the scores obtained from the two surveys. Additionally, internal consistency of the questionnaire was measured with Cronbach’s alpha for both the overall instrument and individual items. Finally, by examining the ratio of variance in observed variables to that in latent variables during confirmatory factor analysis, the reliability of the instruments was determined. The finalized version was prepared in electronic format and distributed to the target groups of population. Findings The study involved One hundred ninety-four students enrolled in social work programs and 256 professionals currently working as social workers. The average age of the students was 24.93 years, with a standard deviation of 7.60 years. In contrast, the practicing social workers had an average age of 38.98 years, with a standard deviation of 8.10 years. Furthermore, the mean work experience for social workers was recorded at 12.09 years, accompanied by a standard deviation of 8.59 years. The quantitative content validity’s questionnaire was evaluated using the content validity ratio (CVR), which yielded a value of 0.74 for the entire instrument. Additionally, the content validity index (CVI) based on the Waltz and Basel method was calculated, resulting in an S-CVI of 0.23. The Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test indicated sample adequacy with a value of 0.713, while Bartlett’s Test of Sphericity was statistically significant (P = 0.001, df = 210). In the exploratory factor analysis, three factors — ‘stereotypes’, ‘individual approach’, and ‘structural approach’— were extracted using the maximum likelihood method with Promax rotation and a pebble diagram, three factors were identified: “stereotypes”, “individual approach”, and “structural approach”.
The specific values of these three factors were 3.19, 2.04, and 1.55, respectively. These three factors explained a total of 32.13% of the total variance of the variances of the variables of attitude towards poverty. After performing the exploratory factor analysis, items No. 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, and 17 were removed from the questionnaire. In the comparison of the means of the two groups, there was a little statistically significant difference (p = 0.004, Cohen’s d (SMD): 0.272). The one-way analysis of variance statistical test showed that the average attitude towards poverty in the subscale of stereotypes and structural approach between the two groups of practicing social workers and students had a statistically significant difference (p = 0.001). However, in the individual approach, there was no significant difference in the averages (p = 0.172). Discussion In this study, various psychometric features of Iranian version of attitude towards poverty were investigated. The obtained finding supported the appropriate and acceptable validity and reliability of the Persian adaptation of this questionnaire. In the current study, based on the reported indicators, the fit of the model was evaluated to be relatively good, and the factor loadings, except item number eight, were all above 0.30, which indicated the lowest standard amount of Loading factor. Also, the results of the CFA (confirmatory factor analysis) of the items resulted in a fairly accurate assessment derived from the overall indicators of the model’s adequacy. Due to the lack of a study that validated the short form in a language other than English, it was not possible to compare the results of the present study with other studies. Tien (2021), who translated the scale into Vietnamese, did not report the psychometric characteristics of the questionnaire in his study (Tien, 2021).
The findings of this present study showed that there is a difference between the attitude of practicing social workers and social work students towards poverty. Practicing social workers tend to favor stereotypes and structural approaches in their perspectives on poverty. In a study conducted by Weiss and Gal (2007) on examining the attitudes of professionals in social workers field regarding the Determinants of poverty, they concluded that social workers are More predisposed than other professionals to relate the causes of poverty to the structures of society (Weiss et al., 2002). In their study, Družić and Ljubotina (2007) concluded that social work students consider individual reasons to be less effective in poverty than students of other disciplines, and their emphasis was on structural reasons and economic poverty as factors affecting poverty (Družić Ljubotina & Ljubotina, 2007) Ethical considerations This research was approved and funded by the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences Ethics Committee on November 25, 2020 (code: IR.MUMS.REC.1399.614). Before starting the study, we provided detailed information about the research to both practicing social workers and social work students and obtained their informed consent to participate. We assured all participants that their data would be kept confidential. Conflicts of interest This article does not overlap with other published works of the authors.