Predictors of Perceived Changes by Service Users: Working Alliance, Hope, and Burnout.

The study reported in this article examines the associations between service users' hope, the social worker--service user working alliance, and social worker burnout as perceived by service users, on the one hand, and perceived change in the service users' presenting problems, on the other. The study was conducted with 342 service users of a large municipal welfare agency. Consistent with the study hypotheses, the findings show (a) positive associations between the working alliance and service users' hope, on the one hand, and between the working alliance and the perceived effectiveness of the intervention, on the other, and (b) negative associations between perceived social worker burnout and perceived intervention effectiveness. They also show that hope and social worker burnout, as perceived by service users, mediate the association between the working alliance and the perceived effectiveness of the intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]