Can Social Workers Estimate the Likelihood of Future Actions and Events? A Forecasting Accuracy Study
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10896191 |
|---|---|
| Authors | David Wilkins (0000-0003-2780-0385, Cardiff University, corresponding author), Melissa Meindl (0000-0002-1231-0175, Cardiff University) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 1150-1169 |
| Publication date | 2024-05-16 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Social Work (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0045-3102 • E-ISSN: 1468-263X |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/bjsw/bcad234 |
| OpenAlex | W4388584792 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 37 |
Social workers routinely make decisions and formulate care plans in the course of their work with children and families. These decisions and care plans are based at least in part on the professional judgement of the worker. An important component of judgemental quality is the extent to which explicit or implicit forecasts about the likelihood of different future actions and events are made with accuracy. In this article, we report an analysis of 21,193 forecasts made by 581 child and family social workers in England about the likelihood of different future actions and events following referrals to children’s services. We found that the more likely social workers said an action or event was to happen (as the forecast likelihood increased towards 100 per cent), the more often it occurred. However, we also found that social workers tend to over-estimate the likelihood of almost all specified future actions and events. Social workers were most accurate when forecasting something to be very unlikely, and less accurate when they forecast something to be likely or very likely. We consider these findings in relation to false positive and negative errors in child protection, and the theory of judgemental rationalism
Action (physics) · Actuarial science · Economics · Event (particle physics) · Judgement · Political science · Quality (philosophy) · Work (physics) · Engineering · Homelessness and Social Issues · Law · Psychiatric care and mental health services · Psychology · Social Psychology · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work
Method in Social Science
Knowledge, Truth and Reflexivity
Debiasing Decisions
Protecting children in an anxious society
Measuring the ratio of true‐positive to false‐positive judgements made by child and family social workers in England
Decision‐making under uncertainty in child protection
Child protection and re‐referrals involving serious concerns
Fair Trials in Child Protection
Investigating child maltreatment in out-of-home care
A simpler way to understand the results of risk assessment instruments
Child Protection Practitioners and Decision-Making Tools
A Systems Approach to Evaluating Organisational Change in Children's Social Care
Heuristics in Professional Judgement
Knowledge and Reasoning in Social Work
Children Starting to be Looked After by Local Authorities in England
Referrals and Child Protection in England
Making Threshold Decisions in Child Protection
A Realist Theory of Science
Should “Systems Thinkers” Accept the Limits on Political Forecasting or Push the Limits
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |