Abstract
DETERMINATION OF THE COMMINICATION AND EMPATHY SKILL LEVELS OF SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS
Social workers support and assist their applicants in the professional relationship established during the intervention process. Students who are candidates for social workers must have necessary communication and empathy skills to establish a strong and healthy professional relationship with the applicant. Aim: The aim is to determine the influencing factors and the level of communication and empathy skills of students who receive social work education. Method: The study is a cross-sectional quantitative study. A sample selected in accordance with the purpose of the research is comprised of a total of 182 students in the first and fourth grade studying in the department of Social Work in Manisa Celal Bayar University; reaching rate is 97.3%. As a measurement tool, "Communication Skills Inventory" which Ersanlı and Balcı studied the validity and reliability, and "Empathy Skills Scale" developed by Dökmen are used together with the questions aiming to obtain socio-demographic data. Whereas descriptive features of the findings from the study were presented by number and percentage distributions, test and correlation analysis were applied in the comparison. Findings: 62% of the students who participated in the survey are females. In the subdimensions of the communication skills scale, the average score of the students is 54.7 ± 5.4 in mental, 53.9 ± 6.9 in emotional, 58.1 ± 6.3 in behavioral and 167.4 ± 16.2 in total, respectively. While the communication skill score was influenced by gender, sibling, and reading habit, it was seen that the frequency of internet use was not one of the variables affecting communication skills. There was no meaningful relationship between the total and sub-dimension scores of the scale, and the continuing class (p> 0.05). The average score from the Empathy Skill Scale is 159.35, and it only appears as a variable that influences gender empathy. There is a meaningful association between empathy and communication skills at a low level in the positive direction.
Result: While there is a positive correlation between the empathy and communication skills of Social Work students, the communication skills of those who are female, readers and have siblings are higher. Women's empathy skills were also found to be higher than men's.
Keywords
Social work, social work education, communication skills, empathy skills.
