Science, Research, and Social Work: Who Controls the Profession?

Graduate Social Work Students' Attitudes Toward Research: Problems and Prospects

“…The emerging emphasis on qualitative methodologies in the 1970s, and new critical methods such as feminist approaches, community-based research and participant-action evaluation stressed expanded social work research possibilities and the inclusion of participants' voices (Lather, 1991). The transformative potential of these approaches coincided with an intense debate about appropriate research methods for social work (Peile, 1988) and the type of research that should be included in social work curricula (Karger, 1983). At present, the evidencebased practice model has emerged as the gold standard in the human service sector, but tensions concerning the nature and role of research in social work continue.…”

The Social Work Research Module(s) From a Social Welfare Perspective

“…Even practitioners often do not have the self-confidence to execute research and it was found that 54% of participants in the study of Strydom (1997:127) lacked the self-confidence to undertake research in their daily practice. Karger (1983) questioned whether all students have the ability to execute complex quantitative research designs. Students have to execute research as part of their course, but once in practice not many graduates use research findings (Tripodi & Epstein, 1978).…”

The knowledge base of social work: a citation analysis

“…Early in its development the social work profession lacked its own knowledge base; hence it was required to borrow from the social sciences in order to initialize its own empirical and practical knowledge base (Goldstein, 1990). It was found that the knowledge source from which social work writers drew upon was by people in fields such as psychiatry, psychology, sociology and social an thropology (Stretch, 1967;Grinnell and Royer, 1983;Karger, 1983;Weick, 1987;Cheung, 1990;Fraser et ai, 1991).…”