![Sample our Health and Social Care journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5938/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Health-Social-Care.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
This study examines the motives behind the choice of social work as a career, and using the vocabulary of motives and folk logic as supporting theoretical concepts looks at how these motives can be understood. The study draws on data collected in Sweden through a questionnaire administrated to 583 newly qualified social workers and from written descriptions by 295 first-term social work students. The results show that there are several motives for undertaking social work as a career: altruistic ones, professional strategic ones, motives founded in personal experiences, and motives related to the individual’s personal characteristics. The last-mentioned motive is a new discovery in research, while the others have been well established for some time.
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my great appreciation to Professor Emeritus Anders Bruhn, Örebro University, for his thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. What Brante et al. (Citation2015) consider as ‘younger’ and ‘older’ social workers is unclear.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Anna Charlotta Petersén
Anna Petersén is a senior lecturer at School of Law, Psychology, and Social Work, Örebro University, Sweden.