Who Benefits from Interprofessional Training? Examining Iccas Change By Geographic Background Among Social Work Students

Background and Purpose: To advance equitable preparation for collaborative practice, social work research must examine whether interprofessional training produces comparable gains for students from all backgrounds. Interprofessional collaboration is especially critical in behavioral health settings, where social workers routinely coordinate care across disciplines and where students' social and place-based experiences may shape their readiness for team-based practice. Yet less is known about whether geographic background — urban, suburban, or rural — differentially influences the outcomes of interprofessional training. This exploratory study examined pre-post change in Interprofessional Collaborative Competency Attainment Scale (ICCAS) scores among social work trainees in the Certificate of Advanced Brief Interventions for Substance Abuse among Multiple Communities (CABISAM) program. The guiding research questions ask: To what extent do ICCAS scores change from pretest to posttest among Year 4 social work students? And do pre-post changes differ by students' geographic background?

Methods: Data came from a single Year 4 cohort of 55 social work students who completed pretest and posttest surveys. Geographic background was self-identified as urban, suburban, or rural. The ICCAS assessed students' self-rated ability to carry out interprofessional tasks, including promoting effective communication, understanding team members' contributions, engaging patients and families in decision-making, addressing team conflict respectfully, and negotiating responsibilities within overlapping scopes of practice. Analyses included descriptive statistics, paired-samples t-tests, effect size estimation, subgroup paired t-tests by geography, and between-group comparisons of change scores using ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and regression models.

Results: Findings indicated a statistically significant overall increase in ICCAS scores from pretest to posttest. Mean ICCAS scores increased from 3.99 to 4.48, reflecting an average gain of 0.49 points, t(54) = 5.39, p < .001, with a moderate effect size (Cohen's d = 0.73). Item-level analyses showed significant gains on 19 of 20 ICCAS items, suggesting broad-based growth across domains of interprofessional communication, collaboration, role clarity, patient-centered care, and conflict management. Descriptively, urban students demonstrated the largest mean gain (0.67), followed by suburban (0.43) and rural (0.27) students. However, these differences were not statistically significant, F(2,52) = 1.27, p = .291, and were similarly non-significant in nonparametric and regression analyses.

Conclusions and Implications: These findings suggest that interprofessional training within CABISAM strengthens social work students' collaborative practice competencies across multiple domains, supporting preparation for team-based behavioral health care. Calls for attention to how students' social and place-based backgrounds shape educational outcomes are important for social work education research committed to equity. Although geography did not significantly differentiate gains, the descriptive pattern points to the need for continued examination of whether training models build equitable readiness for collaborative practice across diverse student populations. As social work research advances the common good, evaluating how educational innovations serve all students — regardless of where they come from — remains a vital contribution to democratic, responsive, and inclusive behavioral health systems.