Outcomes of a Design Thinking Program on Social Workers: An Evaluation Study

Purpose: This study explored the outcomes of a youth empowerment program guided by design thinking on social workers’ innovations in youth service. Method: Forty-seven practitioners joined this program with two stages: the capacity-building stage and the implementation stage. A pretest-intermediate test-posttest design survey was used to explore practitioners’ changes. Results: Significant differences were found in creative self-efficacy and innovative behavior, with the posttest mean scores of these indicators being higher than those of the pretest. Additionally, the results indicated significant differences in youth-practitioner partnerships and inter-professional learning. The posttest mean score of youth-practitioner partnerships was higher than those of the pretest and intermediate test, while the posttest and intermediate test mean scores of interprofessional learning were higher than that of the pretest. Conclusion: The findings suggest that participants need both opportunities to learn about design thinking through capacity-building and to integrate what they have learned during project implementation.