Measuring Vietnamese social work students’ and non-social work students’ attitudes toward poverty and poor population

Abstract The paper reports the results collected from social work students (SW) and nonsocial work students (NSW) of Ho Chi Minh City Open University (OU) through attitudes toward poverty and poor people in Vietnam. The Attitude toward Poverty Short Form (ATP-SF) 21-item (ATP-SF) scale, developed by Yun & Weaver (2010), was used for the data collection. The sample of this study comprises 180 students enrolled in three disciplines: social work (n = 86), law (n = 34), foreign language (n = 30) and economics (n = 30). The questionnaire was used to collect the data for the study. Cronbach’s alpha and independent t-tests were run to compare means between two groups of students. All students voluntarily participated in the survey. Results: A total of 180 social work students and nonsocial work students at Ho Chi Minh City Open University in Vietnam were surveyed. Among them, 86 were social work students, and the other 94 students were from law (n = 34), foreign language (n = 30) and economics (n = 30). The survey results showed that when looking for causes of poverty, social work students and nonsocial work students put the most emphasis on structural factors of poverty. However, social work students, compared with nonsocial work students, consider personal deficiency and stigma more important.