A Quantitative Ethnographic Study of the Biases and Countertransference In Process Recordings That Inhibit Selection and Use of Social Work Skills

Background and Purpose:

Process recording is a ubiquitous aspect of social work field education that aims to provide insight into a student’s practice world and interactions. Little scholarship examines the content of process recording material and even less research examines the outcomes of process recording (Aguilar, 2026). If the goal of social work education is to guide “..the profession’s future through the education of competent professionals, the generation of knowledge, the promotion of evidence-informed practice through scientific inquiry, and the exercise of leadership”, then the paucity of a process recording evidence-base inhibits that goal (CSWE, 2022). The quantitative ethnographic study analyzes the process recordings by MSW students to explore biases, skills, problem identification, and counter-transference in the content.

Methods:

A purposive sample of 61 process recordings by 30 first year social work students was analyzed using quantitative ethnographic methods. The dataset was coded for biases, countertransference, social work skills, and problem identification. ENA models the structure of student reasoning, quantifies co-occurrence of coded material, and visualizes the relationship between codes in a two dimensional space (Ingres & Eagan, 2022). Qualitative analysis of the coded material then complements the quantitative analysis thereby revealing an integrated analysis of the data.

Results:

Biases, countertransference, problem-identification, and social work skills are evident in the dataset. The epistemic network analysis demonstrates that students’ biases filter their choice of social work skills and their interpretation or identification of client problems. Analysis of the process recording illustrates a quantitatively strong link between student feelings, biases and countertransference. Results also demonstrate that student feelings, biases, and countertransference subsequently filter interpretation of client problems, social work skills, and analytic thinking. Qualitative analysis indicates that students are not recognizing this link or identifying how their feelings, biases, and countertransference are influencing their skill selection.

Conclusions and Implications:

Students enter their practice settings with feelings and biases. These feelings and biases enter professional interactions, resulting in countertransference that shades practice. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of written process recordings document this network. Some field supervisors do not analyze student process recordings, and many schools do not offer rubrics or guidance that shape their analysis. Without analysis of process recordings, students might develop a process recording and assume they are demonstrating competent practice without seeing how their feelings, biases, and countertransference are shaping their interactions, skills, and understanding of the client’s experience. Further analysis of process recording can build on these findings to examine changes in biases, feelings, and countertransference across students’ social work education. Moreover, this analysis of student skills in interaction can assess the competence of social work students as they progress through social work education.