Chapter 12: Empowerment Theory and the Strengths Perspective

Test Bank

Multiple Choice

1. Which of the following statements about empowerment theory is correct?

a. It argues that humans can accomplish anything.

b. It support clients’ capacities, growth and change.

c. It maintains a working focus only on individuals.

d. It maintains a working focus only on environment.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Key Themes In Empowerment Theory

Difficulty Level: Medium

2. ______ is defined as a process of increasing personal, interpersonal, or political power so that individuals can take action to improve their life situations.

a. Strengths

b. Resilience

c. Membership

d. Empowerment

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Historical Context For Empowerment Theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. ______ has been defined as the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions.

a. Positive psychology

b. Individual psychology

c. Clinical psychology

d. Social psychology

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Easy

4. ______ is the process of building upon the strengths and virtues of individuals, groups and communities.

a. Engagement

b. Assessment

c. Intervention

d. Evaluation

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Applied Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. Which of the following statements describes positive thinking?

a. It is aimed at alleviating suffering by building up strengths to develop happiness and a life worth living.

b. It attempts to see the world through rose colored glasses regardless of the difficulties and challenges of the ‘real’ world.

c. it is tied to a rigorous program of empirical quantitative research, professional practice, and clients’ voices and expertise.

d. It acknowledges and incorporates realistic appraisals about problems that impact people’s everyday lives.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Concerns About Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Hard

6. What did Ann Weick’s work entail?

a. She took a philosophical stance rooted in epistemology and ontology.

b. She critiqued the use of normative theories for their oppressive nature.

c. She was concerned about the impact of the positivist approach on social work.

d. She looked at issues related to the power dynamics in social work practice.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Ann Weick

Difficulty Level: Medium

7. Which of the following statements describes Dennis Saleebey’s work?

a. He was concerned about the impacts of social work’s utilization of a positivist approach.

b. He noted that the provision of tangible resources is one central function of social work.

c. He argued that we face changes requiring that our identity be examined as circumstances change.

d. He put forth a reconceptualization of our understanding of human behavior as cyclical.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Dennis Saleebey

Difficulty Level: Hard

8. ______ turned the concept of insight away from its more traditional psychological roots, toward insight about institutions, organizations, and cultural norms that oppressed social work clients.

a. Saleebey

b. Weick

c. Rapp

d. Goscha

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Dennis Saleebey

Difficulty Level: Easy

9. Which of the following statements is an accurate critique of empowerment/strengths approaches?

a. They are limited because they just offer the idea that individuals can adapt to unjust sociopolitical structures by discovering a personal ability.

b. Their entire orientation is more directed toward enabling the individual to join with the worker in co-creating the intervention or ‘therapy’ itself.

c. They assume that all human behaviors are caused by sociopolitical and institutional structures such as economic stratification and gender inequality.

d. There is no objective evidence that social work practice focusing on people’s strengths and/or aiming to empower them is effective.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: What Does This Theory Say About Human Behavior?

Difficulty Level: Hard

10. Imagine you are working with a client who is anxious and depressed. You suggest that the client experiences anxiety and depression because he/she is part of an oppressed, exploited or marginalized group. Which theories are you using to inform your practice?

a. cognitive theory

b. empowerment/strengths theories

c. behavioral theories

d. psychodynamic theory

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: What Does This Theory Say About Human Behavior?

Difficulty Level: Medium

11. When helping a woman living in poverty, an empowerment and strengths-based practitioner is most likely to do which of the following?

a. blame the woman for her “personal problems”

b. privilege “assessment and diagnoses” as an expert

c. address oppressive, sexist societal structures

d. hand out cash to help her make ends meet

Cognitive Domain: Application

Answer Location: How Does This Theory Address Growth and Change (E.G., For Individual And Community)?

Difficulty Level: Hard

12. Which of the following statements is TRUE about the empowerment theory and the strengths perspective?

a. They help to combat societal oppression and discrimination.

b. They never address clients’ problems, needs and difficulties.

c. They never assist clients in addressing or resolving those problems.

d. They can only be applied at the individual or personal level.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: How Holistic Is This Theory?

Difficulty Level: Hard

13. The strengths perspective assumes which of the following?

a. Clients know their situations and can define the best solutions for their challenges.

b. All social workers agree that clients are active subjects and claimants.

c. Social work maintains a dual focus: the person and the environment.

d. The focus of social work is to serve historically disempowered groups and individuals.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Table 12.1

Difficulty Level: Easy

14. A theme of empowerment theory is ______.

a. Each client has a distinct capacity for growth and change.

b. Individual and societal problems occur within transactions between systems.

c. Positive change builds on a vision of future possibilities.

d. Social work maintains a dual focus: the person and the environment.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Table 12.1

Difficulty Level: Easy

15. As social workers, which of the following statements about the strengths perspective are we most likely to agree?

a. It does not require accurate accounting of resources that exist within and around our client systems.

b. It requires suspending judgments about the meaning of clients’ behaviors we draw from the empowerment theory.

c. It does not require that we carefully examine our agency bureaucratic structures and organizational dynamics.

d. It requires that we examine our own professional language and the metaphorical devices.

Cognitive Domain: Analysis

Answer Location: Elements of The Strengths Perspective

Difficulty Level: Hard

16. Saleebey accomplished which of the following?

a. He asserted that the only way to escape the conceptual and language problems is to “overturn the medical model.”

b. He argued that the language and its conceptual limitations establish the potential for oppression in the helping relationship.

c. He acclaimed professional language and concepts focused on the development of a replacement document for the DSM IV.

d. He proposed the creation of a “strengths manual” which focused on clients’ capabilities, capacities, possibilities and potential.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Implications for Translating These Elements Into Practice

Difficulty Level: Easy

17. How was the Strengths Model developed?

a. It developed prior to its conceptual underpinnings of the Strengths Perspective.

b. It was developed after its conceptual underpinnings of the Strengths Perspective.

c. It grew out of case management efforts with people with psychiatric disabilities.

d. It presented a similar approach to existing practice strategies in the field of mental health.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Medium

18. Which of the following is a principle of the Strengths Model?

a. Every individual, group, family, and community has strengths.

b. Trauma and illness may be sources of challenge and opportunity.

c. Social workers must take individual, group, and community aspirations seriously.

d. People with psychiatric disabilities can learn, grow and change.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Medium

19. Which of the following statements is consistent with the Strengths Model?

a. The client is a director of the helping process.

b. Not every environment is full of resources.

c. Care is essential to the well-being of small children.

d. Social workers best serve clients by getting to know them.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Medium

20. Which of the following statement is a principle of the strengths perspective?

a. The client is a director of the helping process.

b. Care is essential to human well-being.

c. The worker/client relationship is primary and essential.

d. People with psychiatric disabilities can learn, grow and change.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Medium

21. Which of the following statements is consistent with the strengths perspective?

a. The social worker is a director of the helping process.

b. Every individual, group, family, and community has strengths.

c. The goal set up by the social worker is primary and essential.

d. The primary setting of social work is in the family and community.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Medium

22. ______ rests on the notion that both individuals and communities have a reservoir of resources that can be brought to bear in any situation.

a. Resilience

b. Membership

c. Empowerment

d. Wellness

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Easy

23. The concept of ______ emphasizes that the connections between individuals and the community must be acknowledged and nurtured in order for both to be healthy.

a. resilience

b. membership

c. empowerment

d. wellness

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Easy

24. People should have an active role in making choices about their current situation and their own vision for their future. This idea is consistent with which of the following concepts?

a. resilience

b. membership

c. empowerment

d. wellness

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Easy

25. The Strengths model and the strengths perspective are built on the notion of ______.

a. social constructionism

b. cognitive behavioralism

c. contemporary feminism

d. radical postmodernism

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Easy

True/False

1. Empowerment theory maintains that clients are active subjects and claimants who yearn for freedom, justice and fulfilment.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Key Themes in Empowerment Theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. Positive psychology is similar to strengths/empowerment with its shift away from pathology/disease and move toward an emphasis on prevention and overall wellbeing.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Easy

3. Retrospective psychology suggests that humans thrive in conditions where they can exercise their capacities to creatively imagine new futures.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Concerns About Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Medium

4. According to Weick, the provision of tangible resources is one central function of social work.

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Ann Weick

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. Empowerment theory and the strengths perspective are more consistent with quantitative forms of research.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: What Sources Of Knowledge Does This Theory Support (E.G., Client’s Voice, Social Worker’s Practice Wisdom, Qualitative and Quantitative Research Studies)?

Difficulty Level: Medium

Short Answer

1. What are the major themes of the empowerment theory?

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: Key Themes in Empowerment Theory

Difficulty Level: Easy

2. Identify the four primary aims of applied positive psychology.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Applied Positive Psychology

Difficulty Level: Medium

3. Summarize Ann Weick’s contribution to the development of the strengths perspective.

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Ann Weick

Difficulty Level: Medium

4. What are the six fundamental principles of the Strengths Model proposed by Rapp & Goscha?

Cognitive Domain: Knowledge

Answer Location: The Strengths Model

Difficulty Level: Easy

5. What are the four personal attributes necessary for strengths-based practice?

Cognitive Domain: Comprehension

Answer Location: Personal Attributes Necessary for Strengths-Based Practice

Difficulty Level: Medium