Social Work Research for Social Justice

Beth Humphries, Jo Campling

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781350313330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Students of social work need to understand the contribution of research, as part of this evidence base, to effective practice. This textbook introduces students to a range of research methods at a practical level and sensitises them to the political dimension of research.

chapter 1 Introduction: research as contentious

Introduction

This is a book about research methods for social work and social care practice. The emphasis on the need for students to understand research approaches and for practitioners to be ‘research-minded’ is an important development for the profession and one to be welcomed. The book is intended as a practical contribution both in enhancing awareness of studies that inform practice and in offering tools to those who conduct their own studies. There are a number of good books on research methods that are used widely on training courses (see, for example, Bell, 1993; Denscombe, 2003; Mark, 1996; Royse, 2003; Sheppard, 2004) and that offer detailed practical instructions for conducting research projects. I have resisted the temptation to write another text that is solely a ‘how-to-do-it’ manual, because no human activity is uninfluenced by particular ways of viewing the world, and research no less than any other activity is always in the interests of some social group or other. It is as well to acknowledge that at the outset, and to declare what this means for the rest of the book.

In constructing the content therefore, it has been my aim to set the book firmly in a framework of social justice and thus to take a position which sees social research not solely as a range of neutral approaches to the examination of social problems, but as itself a profoundly political exercise, and as having potential to contribute to social change for good or ill. In describing a range of methodologies available to social workers and social work researchers, I offer a critique of them in relation to their use towards transformation in the conditions of poverty and oppression experienced by many of those who find themselves in the system of welfare.

The book is aimed at qualifying students who are required to demonstrate that they understand the methods and debates advocated for practitioner-researchers, at practitioners who are increasingly urged to evaluate their practice and to pursue continuing professional development, at academics who are responsible for teaching and research in social work and social care, at managers who are accountable for the work they supervise and at policy makers who often set the terms of research undertaken. It is also an appeal to service user groups who increasingly carry out their own research, or demand a say in that of dominant institutions, or for whom an informed critique of research affecting them is crucial to their future. Although the content of the book is written from the UK social work and social care context, many of the themes – epistemological and methodological debates, ‘evaluation’, ‘evidence-based practice’, ‘research-mindedness’, for example – as well as the methods presented, will be relevant to concerns in the social and health professions in the wider global economy, and I hope will contribute to a critical rethinking of practice in this field.

This introductory chapter and the following chapter are used to set the context of research in social work, and to address some of the key themes readers will need to appreciate in the effort to grasp the implications of the methods and approaches described later. For this reason it is important for readers not to skip these chapters, but to persevere in the intellectual effort to understand the complexities of the notion of research-mindedness, the concept of evidence-based practice, competing research paradigms and generally the politics of social research, as these form the building blocks for what comes later.

Research-mindedness

In recent years social workers and other professionals have been encouraged to develop ‘research-mindedness’, both informing themselves of research findings and applying them to their practice, and undertaking their own research where appropriate, though the tradition of research in social work has a long history. Dominelli (2005) offers a full discussion of this and of the background to the contemporary interest in research. Briefly, in the UK the government has insisted on this in a number of ways, notably through the Quality Assurance Agency statement about expectations of standards of degrees in social work (QAA, 2000), within National Occupational Standards, the requirements for the degree in social work and in post-qualifying training. The remit of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) is to promote ‘useful and relevant knowledge’ (Walter et al., 2004, Preface). Along with this have been established a number of government-supported organizations, and the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has brought universities into a UK Network for Evidence-based Policy and Practice. But research-mindedness is not a straightforward notion, and is caught up with competing definitions of the nature of ‘knowledge’, what counts as ‘research’, whose interests are served by it, and so on. This debate about what counts as research and knowledge, and who decides on what is acceptable as methods and data, is at the heart of concerns of social researchers. There are many kinds of knowledge, and in our society some are regarded as more acceptable than others, in research as in other aspects of life. In the hierarchy of knowledge, certain perspectives are privileged over others, and it is important for social work and health professionals not to be naïve about the politics of social research that affects their practice. For example, managerial and government priorities are focused on urgent answers to practical problems – what will work in changing behaviour? What resources are needed? What are the costs involved? (see Butler and Pugh, 2004) – often to the exclusion of explanations as to why the issue became a problem in the first place, or the meaning of behaviour to individuals and groups. In this scenario ‘best-practice’ research-mindedness is concerned with targets, budgets, resources. On the other hand some have argued that research-mindedness is ‘best practice’ when it inquires into inequalities and injustices that result in problematic behaviour, and indeed when it questions why such behaviour is regarded as problematic (Webb, 2001). Here research-mindedness requires a commitment – even a passion – on the part of practitioners and researchers, which will lead them towards thinking that is beyond common-sense, taken-for-granted and instrumental knowledge, where they explore perspectives on social issues that they care deeply about.

Research-mindedness in social work is meant to refer to the need for practitioners to be aware of research findings and to apply these in their daily practice. It also entails social workers involving themselves in evaluating their own practice and in making appropriate changes to it. However with regard to the first of these, a complication is that research findings are seldom clear or straightforward and indeed can be conflicting, so ‘application’ is a matter of interpretation within organizations, which will have their own priorities and interests. Practitioners should not accept these interpretations uncritically. In situations where practitioners or students are engaged in their own research or evaluation of practice it is important to be aware that there will always be a number of ways of defining the problem to be researched, even where one is apparently collecting statistics about client need and services. Therefore a key ingredient of research-mindedness is a questioning attitude that asks why, and to what purpose. Jo Campling, in the foreword to Everitt et al. (1992) offers a vision of research-mindedness that widens the official definitions of it to include dimensions linked to ethics and justice. Her three principles are:

a participatory/developmental model of social work, as opposed to a social control model;

anti-oppressive values;

striving towards a genuine partnership between practitioners and those whom they serve. (p. vii)

In Campling’s view, research-mindedness should be explored in an holistic way:

Problem formulation, data collection, data analysis and evaluation are not treated as discrete stages in the supposedly linear process of research. Instead each of these is addressed using the same framework: values, purposes, ethics, communication, roles and skills. Anti-oppressive practices and developmental principles also anchor the process from beginning to end. (p. vii)

For the research-minded practitioner, the taken-for-granted is opened up to critical scrutiny. Always in mind is the way in which values and interests pervade research studies, the knowledge produced by them and the policies that are implemented as a result of them.

Evidence-based practice

Evidence-based practice is a dimension of research-mindedness, referring to the application of research findings to practice, instead of practitioners operating simply on what is common sense, or their own whimsical or preferred methods of intervention. Increasingly official statements about helping professions assume evidence-based criteria as a building block of practice (e.g. Audit Commission, 1996; ESRC, 2001). Research that takes place in health and social care, and indeed in all other settings, should be credible, rigorous and methodologically sound, and should provide a basis that can guide and underpin practice. Across the professional and political spectrum the model is applied, ‘evidence-based medicine, evidence-based education, evidence-based social work, evidence-based policy making and evidence-based practice … evidence-based everything’ (Oakley, 2000, p. 308). This seems desirable and straightforward, but as with ‘research-mindedness’, there are complexities. It needs to be said that (i) what ‘evidence’ is, is not straightforward and (ii) ‘evidence’ is seldom if ever clear, definitive and unambiguous. This means there are different views about what it is legitimate to call evidence (e.g. expert observations? Research participants’ experiences and understandings?). Evidence is also open to a range of interpretations that can result in very different action being taken. In social care research a debate is going on about what kinds of research are appropriate and legitimate. There is a view that the government and social care organizations prefer a scientific approach, conducted by experts and based on experiments as used in the physical sciences, and on ‘hard’ data. This is set in opposition to the ‘soft’ data that result from qualitative interviewing and include the meanings, opinions and stories of the people who are being researched (see Butler and Pugh, 2004). The following definition was developed in the field of health, but contains the key ingredients of this scientific approach:

Evidence-based practice is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients, based on skills which allow the doctor to evaluate both personal experience and external evidence in a systematic and objective manner. (Sackett et al., 1997, p. 2)

Newman et al. (2005, p. 4) spell out what they understand by ‘conscientious’ (governed by a sense of duty where professionals can justify their claims to knowledge); ‘explicit’ (distinctly expressing all that is meant, by making clear on what basis decisions about interventions are made); and ‘judicious’ (exercising sound judgement grounded in experience). Few people would argue with the view that available evidence helps us in decision-making in the best interests of service users (although there are always questions about what it is actually telling us). However, there have been concerns that the model of research that currently dominates social work and social care is the scientific model that meets managerial priorities to find urgent answers to practical problems, mainly concerned with what works in regulating people’s behaviour with the exp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• List of abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: research as contentious
• 2 Ethical research and social justice
• 3 Experimental ways of knowing
• 4 Participatory research
• 5 Action research
• 6 Case study research
• 7 Critical social research
• 8 Discourse analysis
• 9 Ethnographic research
• 10 Social surveys
• 11 Evaluation research
• 12 Conclusion
• References
• Internet resources
• Index