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Social workers are interested and concerned with the experiences of people he or she assists or work with, and this makes qualitative research so important. This research method provide social workers with a better understanding of issues and situations. Qualitative research inform social workers about the best way to help people who are in need of assistance. Qualitative research is useful for social workers to obtain knowledge in complex or sensitive situations for example workplace bullying. Many issues in the social working profession fall within the area of sexuality and mental health issues, qualitative research is one of the best ways for social workers to find the help for individuals with these types of problems (Rubin, 2014). This paper will discuss a article about issues of workplace bullying of social workers, and coping responses.

The article was a cross-sectional, non-experimental case study of social worker's perceptions of bullies at the workplace and the social worker's ability to create coping responses to workplace bullying. To collect quantitative information a mail questionnaire was gathered, and individual semi-structured interviews were assessed. The qualitative sample included 111 male and female social workers from Washington D.C. The final outcome results were three to five social workers reported that he or she were recipients of rude, unpleasant, and unfavorable workplace environmental interactions within a year. The bullies targets generally worked in military and mental health outpatient organizations or government agencies. 35 percent of the targets held a direct service role, and 29 percent held a management or administrator role. The result outcome from the study provided evidence that in the social working profession the agencies and organizations need guidelines or tools to help discover, confront, and stop these bullying behaviors in the workplace (Menendez, Whitaker, 2012)

The article incorporates tables, descriptive statistics, that helps with the understanding of the data. The article provide five table illustrations. Table one is about the demographic characteristic of the targets of the workplace bullies. The table displays the characteristics of social workers ranging by age, gender, and demographic. Table two is about organizational settings and roles of targets. The table displayed supervisors, colleagues, subordinates, and clients were all identified as bullies. It showed that women were more than twice as likely (67%) to be identified as bullies as were men (33%). Table three is about the most troubling bullying behaviors. It showed that verbally and covertly hostile actions were the most troubling bullying behaviors in the workplace. In addition, being treated with disrespect and having work de-valued as the hardest aspects of being bullied at the workplace. Table four was the summary characteristics of bullies. The study showed the characteristic were either passive or assertive by the Coping Scale. The passive behavior had a ranging score of 24 and assertive was of 60. The median and mean scores were 42.5, and a multiple modal score. Table five was the classification of responses to coping scale as passive or assertive coded in the same direction. The table explained coping strategy and responses. Several questions were asked in a questionnaire. The more passive the response, the lower the value assigned to it, the more assertive the response, the higher the value was assigned to it. The targets had a range of coping strategies, the biggest response strategy was taking about the bullying with someone he or she trusted; 93 percent used this strategy more than once. 66 percent used the stagey of confronting the person more than once. However, only 17 percent used making a formal complaint (Menendez, Whitaker, 2012)

The data that was provided in the article were appropriate for the information that was needed for the social workers. The data supported the research problem of workplace bullying. The study was noteworthy and explained that three out of five social workers were recipients of rude, unpleasant, and unfavorable workplace environmental interactions. However, the article did not provide inferential statistics. The data was collected through a questionnaire and based on actual results to determine the statistics (Menendez, Whitaker, 2012)

In conclusion, this article explored the issues of workplace bullying of social workers and the coping responses, it included a number of concerned issues for the social working profession. Among these issues included the characteristic of workplace bullies, and coping responses. The article suggests that workplace bullying is a serious issue for social workers and needs to create guidelines and tools to help stop bullying behaviors (Menendez, Whitaker, 2012)

Reference:

Menendez, C., & Whitaker, T. (2012). Social workers and workplace bullying: Perceptions, responses and implications. Work, 42(1), 115-123.
Rubin, A. (2014). Social Work Research Methods. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780195389678/obo-9780195389678-0008.xml
(Menendez, Whitaker, 2012)