Stereotypes about social worker on the basis of inhabitans of Tábor

This bachelor thesis deals with stereotypes of social worker at the residents of region Táborsko. In theoretical part, factors which influence public perception, especially their attitudes, stereotypes and prejudices are defined. Thesis further describes conception social work as such, its professionality, values, help and control. It focuses on the relationship between social work and mass media. Media have the power to influence its audience to different behavior and thus have impact on reorganization of society. In one of the chapters the social worker is closely introduced. Especially his competences, roles and authority. Social worker helps to represent social work and takes different roles in it. With social work stereotypes are deeply wedded which occur everywhere around us and are ordinary part of our lives. However stereotypes are sources of creating prejudices of which is in our society countless. Goal of this work is to find out how is the social worker stereotyped at the residents of region Táborsko. In other words goal is to explore opinion of inhabitants about social worker and analyze which stereotypes are represented the most. With quantitative research the research survey was implemented. Within this research the questioning method was used with semantic differential. For fulfillment of the work, two research questions were set: VO1: On which demographical factors depend the public perception of social workers? VO2: What are the sources of negative public perception of social worker? Following hypotheses were set toward above- mentioned questions: H1: Women perceive social worker more positive than men. H2: The higher education person has the more positive is stereotype perception of social worker. H3: People who experienced direct contact with social worker have more positive opinion of him. The research sample represents overall 309 inhabitants of region Táborsko. These representatives belongs to age group of 15 35 years. Concretely, it comprises of 309 respondents who live in region Táborsko. Collected data were analyzed by descriptive statistics in MS Excel programme. Testing of hypothesis was realized in the programme SPSS with method t-test and correlation. Characteristics, given to social worker by respondent, were defined by semantic differential. Respondents noted their opinion about particular object by choosing the mark on scale from one to seven. Endpoints were defined by pair of contradictory adjectives. From results of research survey the findings are following. For the first hypothesis significant statistic relation were found at human characteristics: careful careless, kind evil, responsible irresponsible, friendly unfriendly, strong personality weak personality, willing selfish, even tempered unsettled. Research shows, concretely average from the t-test, that at these characteristics women perceive social worker more positive than men. For the second hypothesis was tested whether with growing education the positive perception of social worker grows as well. Test demonstrates that the more people are educated the more they think that social workers are priceless, important and they have strong personality. Last but not least, for the third hypothesis significant relation was found at characteristics responsible irresponsible, friendly unfriendly, willing selfish, even tempered unsettled and unrecognized appreciated. From outcome of t-test it can be seen that people with own experience with social worker have more positive opinion than people whose experience is derived from media or they have none. Results from research of this bachelor thesis may be used as a source of information for public and also may interest social workers from Tábor region. To limit the occurrence of stereotypes I would recommend to create campaign where the public will be familiarized with profession of social worker