Supervisor Referrals to Employee Assistance Programs: A Social Learning Perspective

The purpose of this study is to locate the important variables in the decisions by supervisors to refer employees troubled by alcohol, drug or emotional problems to “employee assistance programs.” A self-administered questionnaire was given to a sample of 90 supervisors in two general hospitals in the southeast. Social learning theory guided the research. Data were analyzed by discriminant function analysis.

The discriminant function analysis was performed to determine if variables derived from social learning theory could explain why some supervisors refer employees with drug, alcohol or emotional problems to the employee assistance program and others do not. The social learning variables explained 42% of the variance in the dependent variable, (referring and non-referring behavior of the supervisors). Also, the discriminant function with the social learning variables was able to successfully classify 78% of the cases into the referring and non-referring groups.