Exploring Social Workers Attitudes Toward Gay Men And Lesbian Women: An Implicit Approach

This manuscript explores attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women historically across helping professions with particular emphasis on social workers. Particular attention is focused on examining the predictors associated with attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women. Furthermore, this manuscript documents a study that assesses social workers' attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women utilizing an indirect methodology, the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This is a new instrument that measures implicit attitudes while minimizing systematic error, specifically social desirability which is inherent in direct methods of inquiry. The sample (N = 110) consisted of a national random selection of social workers who were members of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) with the clinical/direct practice function designation during March 2008. The results indicated differences among the predictor variables with the most notable being the differences between the gender of the attitude object and the social workers' implicit attitudes. Implications for future research as well as social work policy, practice, and education are discussed.