Abstract:
Frontline social workers in the Philippines are often exposed to the various kinds and
intense levels of traumatic materials posed by their clients as they are required to engage
in an interactive communication with them. Because of this, Compassion Fatigue, or the
reduced capacity or interest in being empathic as a result from helping or wanting to help
a traumatized person among social workers is not viewed as a new concept. However, in
spite of the apparent inclination of professionals in the social work field to develop
compassion fatigue, it seems that not everyone is at risk of developing this work-related
psychological condition. In order to understand further compassion fatigue, one of the
initial steps which should be taken is to determine the reasons, factors or variables that
will help to identify the point of vulnerabilities that affects its development. This study
aims to determine the predictability of compassion fatigue among social workers who are
dealing with clients suffering from a trauma using three personality variables namely:
locus of control, resilience, and empathy. Using a quantitative design, this study
attempted to measure the levels of locus of control, resilience, empathy of the
respondents and identified their relationship with the person‘s level of compassion
fatigue. One-hundred five (105) self-administered questionnaires were completed and
analyzed using Pearson‘s Correlation and Regression analysis. Scoring of the scales show
that the Resilience and Empathy of the respondents are high, while their locus of control
is moderate and compassion fatigue is low. Correlation analysis also shows that locus of
control and resilience has statistically significant and negative relationship with
compassion fatigue, whereas empathy does not. In terms of the predictability of
Compassion Fatigue using Locus of Control, Resilience and Empathy, the independent
variables all present a very weak contribution to the total variation of the scores in the
dependent variable.
