Education and child welfare supervisor performance: Does a social work degree matter?

Objective: To empirically examine whether the educational background of child welfare supervisors in Florida affects performance evaluations of their work. Method: A complete population sample (yielding a 58.5% response rate) of administrator and peer evaluations of child welfare workers' supervisors. ANOVA procedures were utilized to test if performance scores on a multitude of items differed for supervisors with university degrees in social work, psychology, sociology, criminology, education, business, and other fields. Results: The ratings of social workers' skills and competency did not statistically differ from those supervisors with other educational backgrounds on 30 measures of performance. Conclusions: Educational background of child welfare supervisors is a poor predictive variable of their performance as evaluated by their superiors and peers. However, more research is needed to determine if performance evaluations of supervisors are positively correlated with successful service outcomes with clients and evaluations of supervisory performance as gauged by front-line workers.