Doing research application

This chapter looks at several ways in which social work can be understood as being concerned with applying what people know — the application of methods and information for the solving of problems in the lives of those with whom social work practitioners work from day to day. It aims to show that the question of ‘application’ is more difficult than scholars often realise. The chapter delves into recent discussions of the meaning and importance of the ‘impact’ of research, taking as a social work example the question of doing ‘practitioner research’. The emphasis of the discussion is about what scholars know about the experience of doing practitioner research.

Mapping social work research

This chapter provides an overview about the actual research that takes place in social work. It suggests that social work research should be distinguished in terms of the primary substantive focus of the research and the primary problem focus. The chapter illustrates this through research by university-based researchers, service-user researchers, and practitioner researchers, while considering differences associated with the gender of social work researchers. It also shows how the process of ‘mapping’ inevitably requires some degree of simplification and reductionism. The success with which the intent of the mapping is accomplished rests in the extent to which the user — in cartographic terms, the percipient — understands, and is able to assess and engage with its purposes.

What is social work research?

This chapter outlines what seems feasible by way of describing the nature of social work and its linked research. If scholars are to have a clear sense of what ‘research’ means, both in general and in their own field, they need to think of what ‘science’ means. This will include a brief consideration of the relationship between ‘science’ and ‘art’. Following from that, the chapter asks the curious question — curious because it seems strange but also because it encourages curiosity — of whether successful, interesting, or worthwhile research depends at all on serendipity.

Introduction

This introductory chapter offers social work students at different levels and in different countries with a detailed sketch of how research finds a place in the wider social work picture. While scholars often claim a distinctiveness for their writing, the chapter aims to deal with questions that in their detail and also their relation to one another are rarely covered in the social work literature. Social work students are thus engaged in questions and issues in a form that will make for a professional community that is thoughtful, critical, and committed, yet also modest. The chapter shows how the book is not a research methods book at any level, nor is it solely about research, but rather about research as part of a larger picture.

Doing good social work research

This chapter talks about what people may learn from social work controversies, focusing on three general topics: the essential limits of science in social work, the misuses of science, and the principles and practices that help foster good social work research. In the process of evaluating if a particular example of social work research is good or not, one is likely to assume the question is about whether intelligent decisions were made about the study design, the methodology, the analysis and interpretation of the data, and so on. The direct research experience the majority of social workers have of carrying out research may be related to small projects linked to time on qualifying programmes, but it is precisely these criteria by which their work will be assessed.

Sociological social work: a case example

This chapter discusses social work in relation to other fields and disciplines. The underlying assumption is that social work research and practice have much to gain by welcoming their relationship to other bordering fields — particularly sociology. First, the chapter outlines the scope and nature of what sociological social work might encompass. Second, it looks at how sociologists and social workers have understood their relationship. The heart of this section is an introduction to a series of sociologists who are doing work that treats social work as of sociological interest. Finally, the chapter outlines a case about how the methods of inquiry that are associated with qualitative sociological research are open to ‘translation’ such that they may become a form of practice.

Place and space

This chapter explores the ways in which awareness of the meaning and importance of place is shared between the humanities and social work. Moving on to a consideration of the term globalisation, this leads on to a more general consideration of how research practices occur in space and place. In all of this, ‘time’ and ‘place’ are high-level concepts by which scholars structure and make sense of the world, and use effortlessly all the time, yet are quite unable to define. In approaching these issues, distance or closeness of place and space raise comparable questions to those of time closeness or distance.

Social work research over time

This chapter talks about the influence of scholars' general worldview on how they see social work. Turning its gaze to the past, the chapter briefly demonstrates how the ways scholars write and speak about research have changed, giving significant space to the role of experimentation in social work. The chapter examines the idea of the experimenting society, especially through the work of Ada Sheffield; at the success story of evidence based practice; and at a forgotten strand of experimental sociology. It then moves to consider the emergence of innovations in social work, taking task-centred social work as a main example. The ground covered in this chapter distinctively exemplifies the point regarding the synthesis of scepticism and practicality.

Why do research in social work?

This chapter distinguishes different ways scholars can understand the purpose of social work research, giving examples from the literature. Having recognised a range of appropriate purposes for doing research, it considers the consequence of this for how scholars deal with the tensions between these purposes. From there, the chapter considers how the presence of multiple purposes, sometimes in tension with one another, raises the question of how the purposes of social work research are, or should be, taken forward by collaborative, cooperative work. While collaboration may seem an obvious virtue, its achievement is not straightforward. One of the difficulties stems from how best to understand the relationship between social work in the academy and social work in the outside world.