Research Methods for Social Work (Empowerment Series)

by Allen Rubin

often confused with technology

social workers themselves often underestimate the important role that scientific inquiry can play in social work practice.

taking a scientific approach can enhance their practi...

method of inqui...

way of learning and knowing things that can guide the decisions made in ...

search for ev...

examine the nature of scientific inquiry and its relevance for social work. We’ll explore the fundamental characteristics and issues that make scientific inquiry different fr...

value of scientific inquiry in social work practice and how it helps safeguard against some of the risks inherent in alternat...

evidence-based practice—a model of social work practice that emphasizes the use of the scientific method and scientific evid...

examine the research process in social work and various factors that can influence the way th...

provide an overview of and compare the three contrasting yet complementary overarching models of social work research: one that uses quantitative methods to produce precise and generalizable statistical findings; one that uses more flexible, qualitative methods to delve into deeper understandings of phenomena not easily reduced to numbers...

learning things by relying on what most of their teachers, supervisors, and more experienced social workers in general agree to be true. Others might assert that learning things through what they observe and experience in their professional practice is at least as valuable as is learning about what other respected sources agree to be true.

As we grow up, we must rely on what the people we respect tell us to keep us safe and healthy. We shouldn’t and don’t have to experience the harmful or painful effects of doing unsafe or unhealthy things before we learn not to do them. At the same time, we learn other things through our direct experience and observation.

The two ways of knowing things that we’ve been discussing are termed agreement reality ...

Most of what we know is a matter of agreement and belief. Little of it is based on personal experience and discovery. A big part of growing up in any society, in fact, is the process of learnin...

relying exclusively on agreement reality can be risky because some of the things that eve...

mid-20th century, for example, there was widespread agreement that the main cause of schizophrenia was faulty parenting or ot...

No compelling research evidence supported these concepts, but they were nonetheless widely accepted by mental health practitioners. As a result, social workers and other mental health professionals often dealt with the family as a cause of the problem rather than develop a treatment alliance with the family. Many parents conse...

Scientific research studies during the 1970s and 1980s debunked the notion that schizophrenia is caused by schizophrenigenic mothers or...

studies uncovered the biological basis of ...

Other studies showed how practitioners who were guided by the notion of faulty parenting (or other dysfunctional family dynamics) when treating people with schizophrenia and their families were actually increasing the risk of relapse and unnecessarily exacerbating the bu...

example of ineffective or harmful professional practices that were guided by agreement reality include...

popular as an effective way to prevent future violations of th...

thought that by visiting prisons and interacting with adult inmates, juveniles would be so frightened that their fear would deter...

scientific research studies found that Scared Straight programs not only were ineffective but actually inc...

we can also know things through direct experience and observation.

relying exclusively on agreement reality can be risky, so can relying exclusively on experiential reality.

some of the things that we experience are influenced by our predilections that are based on agreements th...

both feelings about the appetizer would be real. Your initial liking for them, based on your own direct experience, was certainly real, but so was the feeling of disgust you had when you found out that you’d been eating worms. It should be evident, however, that the feeling of disgust was strictly a product of the agreements you have with those around you that worms aren’t fit to eat. That’s an agreement you began the first time your parents found you sitting in a pile of dirt with half a wriggling worm dangling from your lips. When they pried your mouth open and reached down your throat to find the other half of the worm, you learned that worms are not acceptable food in our society.

They are also a delicacy for some people who live in societies that lack our agreement that worms are disgusting.

Decades ago, for example, practitioners who believed in the schizophrenigenic mother concept were likely to be predisposed to look for, perceive, and interpret maternal behaviors in ways that fit their agreement reality. We have known clinical practitioners who will look for and perceive even fairly inconsequential client behaviors as evidence that their favored treatment approach is...

selective observation, which is one common way in which our agreement reality influences ...

when we start out in life or in our professional careers, we must inescapably rely heavily on agreement reality and experiential reality as starting points for “knowing” things,...

Science offers an approach to both agreement reality and experiential reality. That approach is ca...

When social workers question things and search for evidence as the basis for making practice decisions, they are ...

key features of the scientific method, beginning with a principle that require...

should strive to keep an open mind about everything that we think we know or t...

should consider the things we call “knowledge” to be tentative and su...

No matter how long a particular tradition has bee...

matter how much power or esteem a particular authority figure may have, no matter how noble a cause may be, no matter how cherished it may be, we can question any belief.

Few of us enjoy facts that get in the way of our cherished beliefs.

Only when a belief you cherish is questioned do you face the tougher test of your commitment to scientific notions of the provisional nature of knowledge and keeping...

not only our beliefs that are open to question; also tentative and open to question are the findings of scientific studies. Because there are no foolproof ways to guarantee that evidence produced by scientific studies is purely objective, accurate, and generalizable, the scientific method also calls for the replication of studies. Replication means duplicating a study to see if the same evidence and conclusions are produced. It also refers to modified replications in which the procedures are changed in certain ways ...

Another key feature of the scientific method is the search for evidence based on observation ...

empirical refers to this valuing of observation-...

one can be empirical in different ways, depending on the nature of the evidence and the way we search for and observe it.

the scientific method seeks truth through observed evidence—not through authority, tradition, or ideology—no matter how much social pressure may be connected to particular beliefs and no matter how many people cherish those beliefs or how long they’ve been proclaimed to be true.

Scientifically minded social workers today should find the same courage to inquire as to the observation-based evidence that supports interventions or policies ...

also examine the nature of that evidence. To be truly scientific, the observations that accumulated the evidence should have been systematic and comprehensive. To avoid overgeneralization and selective observation (errors we will be discussing shortl...

specified procedures also should be scrutinized for...