External supervision is an expanding practice among social workers noted by many authors. However, the empirical evidence of its impact on work efficiency is mixed at best. In the current study, we empirically test the effect of external supervision on social workers’ work engagement and perceived self-efficacy. Our treatment consists of five external supervision sessions. The survey instrument is designed to test the theoretical premises, allowing us to collect before and after data from the treatment and control group and construct a structural equation model for latent constructs such as engagement and self-efficacy. Our sample consists of 73 social workers. We estimate treatment effects using differences-in-differences technique. After controlling for observable self-selection, we show that external supervision has a weak positive effect on engagement but no effect on self-efficacy. The mechanism—whether the content and length of the treatment are important—is under discussion. A weak positive effect of supervision on engagement is present only in the case of those who continued treatment in all five sessions.

中文翻译：

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外部监督对社会工作者参与和自我效能感的影响：一项准实验研究

许多作者指出，外部监督是社会工作者中不断扩大的实践。但是，其对工作效率的影响的经验证据充其量是混杂的。在当前的研究中，我们通过经验检验了外部监督对社会工作者的工作投入和自我效能感的影响。我们的治疗包括五个外部监督会议。该调查工具旨在测试理论前提，使我们能够从治疗和对照组中收集前后的数据，并为诸如参与和自我效能感之类的潜在结构构建结构方程模型。我们的样本包括73名社会工作者。我们使用差异技术估算治疗效果。在控制了可观察的自我选择之后，我们表明，外部监督对参与的积极作用较弱，但对自我效能没有影响。该机制（治疗的内容和时间长短是否重要）正在讨论中。只有在所有五个疗程中都持续接受治疗的人，才对参与的监督产生微弱的积极影响。