This research project proposes to better understand the role of values and attributions in the general area of career choice and how they apply specifically to worker effectiveness and job satisfaction in caregiver settings. A clearer understanding of how values and attributional style relate to career choice, worker effectiveness, and job satisfaction will add to our conceptualization of important aspects of personality. We are exploring these issues in the context of human services. This research will lay the groundwork for efforts to determine if values and attributional orientations can be modified and if those changes are related to increased worker effectiveness and job satisfaction. As such, this project may also lead to strategies to improve caregiver effectiveness. One component of the """"""""health crisis"""""""" is caring for the increasing populations of the elderly, people living with HIV and AIDS, and drug and alcohol abusers. Because of cost containment concerns there is greater reliance on entry level human services workers for direct caregiving and also to work in prevention programs in areas such as childhood immunization efforts and teenage pregnancy. Therefore, the effectiveness of these front line workers is of critical importance in meeting the demands of the present crisis. The subjects for this study will be Bronx Community College students. Caregiver effectiveness will be assessed by translating the skills identified in the national project, The Community Support Skill Standards, into a rating tool. Values will be measured using the Rokeach Value Survey, as well as measures developed by Schwartz and by Super. Attribution will be assessed using the Helping Orientations Scale and by modified measures that will be developed. It is expected that Brickman's models of helping and coping will prove useful in the effort to understand and improve caregiver effectiveness.
