2009/03/01 by Michàlle E. Mor Barak, Michàlle E. Mor Barak, Dnika J. Travis +3 · 1 citation
Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Geriatric Care and Nursing Homes #Homelessness and Social Issues #Social Work Education and Practice
paper · doi:10.1086/599028
crossref issued 2009/03/01 · crossref published 2009/03/01 · crossref published-print 2009/03/01 · openalex publication_date 2009/03/01 · crossref created 2009/04/20 · crossref deposited 2019/05/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · crossref indexed 2026/07/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Effective supervision is a vital aspect of service delivery in social service organizations. This article provides a meta‐analysis of 27 qualified research articles published between 1990 and 2007. The analysis thus includes a combined sample of 10,867 workers in child welfare, social work, and mental health settings. The results indicate that supervisory dimensions of task assistance, social and emotional support, and supervisory interpersonal interaction are positively and statistically significantly related to beneficial outcomes for workers. The dimensions of social and emotional supervisory support and supervisory interpersonal interaction are found to be negatively and statistically significantly related to detrimental outcomes for workers. All effect sizes were moderate (r at the 0.30 to 0.40 range). These findings underscore the importance of effective supervision in fostering beneficial outcomes and in limiting detrimental outcomes for workers. They also indicate that social service agencies should devote resources to training supervisors across all supervisory dimensions.