1997年《社會工作師法》完成立法，獲得國家考試認證，加上近20年來臺灣社會工作系所大幅擴張，社工儼然成為高中生青睞的科系。然而，對於「什麼樣的人會選擇社工系」，過去並沒有豐富的研究累積。本研究針對兩個問題進行實證分析：一、具備哪些特質的高中生會選擇社工系？二、歷經大學專業教育後，這些特質產生如何的改變？為避免樣本自我選擇偏誤，本研究採用較最小平方法線性迴歸更為嚴謹的「傾向分數配對法」，分析人格特質對於是／否就讀社工系之影響。本研究資料來源為「臺灣高等教育整合資料庫」92學年度大一、94學年度大三，同一群體兩次追蹤調查。研究發現，選擇就讀社工系的學生有較強「與各類型人互動」的興趣，但不重視將來的工作機會。再者，是否具備挫折容忍力、人際溝通、觀察力、自我了解與內省等特質，皆不會影響進入社工系的機率。此外，隨著年級增加，社工系學生對各項社工特質的自我評價卻普遍下滑。本研究可作為臺灣社工教育改進之參考。

In 1997, the “Social Worker Act” legislation was completed and it obtained national examination certification. In addition, with the substantial expansion of Taiwan’s social work departments in the past 20 years, social work has become a favorite department of high school students. However, few past studies have addressed what kinds of people choose social work departments. In this study, empirical analysis of two questions was undertaken: First, what characteristics do high school students who choose social work have? Second, when entering the profession after receiving college education, how do these characteristics change? To avoid selection bias, this study used a more rigorous “propensity score matching” than OLS linear regression. We analyzed the impact of personality characteristics on the choice of social work departments. The “Taiwan Integrated Higher Education Database” for freshman in the 2003 school year, and juniors in the 2005 school year was used in this study. Thus, the same cohort of students was analyzed twice in the panel study. This study found that students who choose to study in social work departments have a strong interest in “interacting with various types of people,” but do not attach importance to the future of job opportunities. Furthermore, factors such as frustration, tolerance, interpersonal communication, observation, self-understanding and introspection do not affect the probability of a student entering a social work department. In addition, as grades get higher, the self-evaluation of social worker traits by social work students generally decline. The findings of this study can be used as a reference to improve the education of social workers in Taiwan.