Doing Social Work Research

Louise Hardwick, Aidan Worsley

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781473903692
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This book is a practical beginner?s guide to both conducting and using research within the context of social work practice. A clear and accessible introduction to applied research methods for social work students and practitioners, this text covers the key themes, debates and approaches, including:

- The ethics of social work research

- Conducting interviews and questionnaires

- Focus groups

- Observation and narrative

- The involvement of service users

- Analyzing data

With practical exercises and reflective questions, this is an essential text for undergraduate and postgraduate qualifying social work students.

1

WHAT’S DISTINCTIVE ABOUT SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH?

OVERVIEW

This chapter will explore social work’s knowledge base and the constellation of core values it draws on that predispose it towards enquiry that is both relationship-based and informed by a broader emancipatory mission. The questions ‘What is research?’ and whether there is a justification for practitioner research being seen as a valued perspective in its own right will be investigated. It is argued that, given the nature of social work practice, it is only to be expected that practitioners should seek research knowledge that both arises from, and reflects, the complexities of practice. It is also argued that practitioners themselves might contribute to this knowledge by engaging in research that can inform and influence practice and policy. To begin to understand the challenges facing practitioner research, we will look at the recent history of social work research’s contribution to policy and the drive towards evidence-based knowledge and New Managerialism. We will suggest that practitioners who undertake research could provide both a situated understanding of the unique in each individual and circumstance and offer a challenge/critique of the practices, institutions and polices that militate against social justice. Doing research provides one route for practitioners to realise social work’s emancipatory potential.

WHAT IS DISTINCTIVE ABOUT SOCIAL WORK PRACTICE?

The National Occupational Standards for Social Work draw on the international statement which identifies the social work profession as:

A profession which promotes social change, problem solving in human relationships and the empowerment and liberation of people to enhance well-being. Utilising theories of human behaviour and social systems, social work intervenes at the points where people interact with their environments. Principles of human rights and social justice are fundamental to social work. (International Association of Schools of Social Work and the International Federation of Social Workers, 2001)

This is a statement on the commitment of social work to humanitarian values and the promotion of social change. It provides the nucleus from which issue and permeate the six key roles of social work, and any social work endeavour.

National Occupational Standards for Social Work

Key Role 1:	Prepare for, and work with individuals, families, carers, groups and communities to assess needs and circumstances.
Key Role 2:	Plan, carry out, review and evaluate practice, with individuals, families, carers, groups, communities and other professionals.
Key Role 3:	Support individuals to represent their needs, views and circumstances. Key Role 4: Manage risk to individuals, families, groups, communities, self and colleagues. Key Role 5: Manage and be accountable, with supervision and support, for your own social work practice within your organisation.
Key Role 6:	Demonstrate competence in social work practice.

These key purposes combined with the humanitarian values in the International Federation’s statement mean that for the social worker the service user is not just an individual in a social situation who is the subject of engagement, assessment and practice. The service user is also a unique individual in complex and uncertain circumstances that are influenced to a lesser or greater extent by collective socioeconomic forces. These forces demand acknowledgement and understanding if social justice and inequality are also to be addressed. Nonetheless, this collective emancipatory mission has been an area where the social work profession has struggled to move significantly beyond the rhetoric (Jordan, 2004) despite this fusion of regard for both unique and collective inequalities providing social work with its distinctive nature (Bisman, 2004; Webb, 2001). This is made even more challenging because social work is a highly complex and sometimes apparently contradictory pursuit. It is an adherence to this value base that helps navigate the practitioner through the quagmire that characterises practice. As Jordan argues:

… social work occupies an ambiguous role in society, negotiating with individuals in ways that try to validate their claims to autonomy, but from a position inside such institutions as public agencies, civil society organizations, churches or local groups, and one which involves a duty to criticize and challenge those very institutions, from the perspective of freedom, equality and justice. (2004: 12)

At an individual level of engagement the practitioner must always seek to facilitate a relationship which can enhance well-being and be characterised as ‘relationship-based practice’, an awareness of ‘the uniqueness of each individual’s circumstances and the diverse knowledge sources required to make sense of complex, unpredictable problems’ (Ruch, 2005: 111). Social work also needs to move beyond the individual circumstance to understand and find ways to express concern for the societal inequalities and injustice that feed these individual circumstances. Practitioner research has the potential to express both these sets of values.

SOCIAL WORK KNOWLEDGE

Social work has always been multidisciplinary in its knowledge base and practice, drawing on, for instance, sociological thinking and research, psychology and social policy, and experiential knowledge (reflection). Through sociological thinking social work is offered an understanding of social differences and inequality such as class, disability, race, gender and age in the context of the laws and rules laid down by society. The sociologist gaze is bifocal – distinguishing between social presentation and social reality. Through psychology, social work is offered a knowledge of the processes that will influence and impact on individual behaviour and develop an understanding of personal attachments and relationships and how the nature of these can influence an individual’s behaviour. Through social policy, social work is offered an understanding of the processes involved in the state distribution of resources amongst individuals and groups to meet welfare needs and how this is organised through a range of institutions from ‘the family and the community networks in which the family exists, the market, the charitable and voluntary sectors, the social services and benefits provided by the state, and, increasingly, international organisations and agreements’ (Baldock et al., 2003: xxi). Experiential learning is also important to social work knowledge because social work practice not only relies on technical expertise (theories and methods that can inform interventions and the legal and procedural requirements of the profession), but also on a tacit understanding that is a complicated combination of personal judgment, past experience and theoretical knowledge.

REFLECTION IN SOCIAL WORK

Experiential learning is explored in the work of Donald Schön who has analysed how professionals learn by focusing on what he calls ‘the swampy lowlands’ of professional practice (Schön, 1983). These relate to the inner resources professionals draw on when they find themselves having to make decisions in complex and/or controversial settings. For a social worker the obvious area for these kinds of decisions is regulatory practice, as for example the decision to take care proceedings under Section 38 of the Children Act (1989). However, less obvious situations – like the decision to follow up an intuition that may prove rooted or groundless – also requires complex decision making. Schön is fascinated by the inner resources and processes that influence how professionals can make these difficult complex and contingent decisions.

Schön has suggested that the professional develops a kind of ‘artistry’ which is different from their technical expertise. He has argued that this type of problem/situation cannot be dealt with by simply applying a technical competence. Instead, the professional has to build a ‘repertoire’ of past scenarios, precedents and case studies that can be drawn on to inform an understanding of the ‘here-and-now’ situation. These are accessed by applying knowledge from literature and research but additionally, and more significantly, by applying knowledge from the interpretation of experience. This process only becomes ‘artistry’ when the professional engages in a meaningful reflection on their past experience and practice. Reflection on practice involves:

• recapturing the situation;
• thinking about it;
• mulling it over (alone or with others);
• evaluating;
• acting on that evaluation. (Boud et al., 1985)

For Schön simple reflection is not sufficient as it ignores the social and situational nature of experience. Together with his colleague Argyris he argued that simple reflection will only produce ‘single loop learning’ (Argyris and Schön, 1974). With this kind of learning an individual will simply reinforce and defend old habits and behaviours because it fails to challenge their underlying assumptions, preconceptions and belief systems. You will doubtless be familiar with the attitude ‘This is how I’ve always done it and no one has come to any harm’. For example, when reflecting on something like an altercation with a difficult colleague a practitioner may reflect that this colleague is always difficult and aggressive when asked for information when passing on the corridor. Single loop learning would be content to explore the problem as simply lying with the colleague. This approach lacks the critical reflection that challenges taken-for-granted understanding and problematises the process and motivation.

Alternatively, a competent professional will engage in ‘double loop learning’ which will challenge all previous understanding in a ‘progressively more effective testing of assumptions and progressively greater learning about one’s effectiveness’ (Argyris and Schön, 1974: 86). This double loop learning may, for instance, question the appropriateness of asking for information on the corridor, why appropriate systems for information sharing are not being utilised, what the consequences of affixing the label ‘difficult’ on that colleague are likely to be. The process of critical reflection required for ‘double loop’ learning is inevitably difficult to achieve alone. The would-be learner can be the last person to recognise when their understanding is limited by long-held preconceptions that might go back to childhood because they are so enmeshed in the situation as to be incapable of objectivity. To avoid this Schön suggests what he calls a ‘reflective practicum’, where people come together to analyse an issue or problem and explore it from many different dimensions, including the individual’s emotional response. Argyris and Schön developed their ideas on reflection from an educational discourse where they fundamentally questioned the value of professionals only using theoretical and technical knowledge for their practice. These ideas complement and cross-fertilise with reflexive knowledge, which is also important to the social work practitioner.

REFLEXIVITY IN SOCIAL WORK

Although reflexivity is a similar concept to reflection, it developed out of a social science discourse and has been used as an approach in social science research. It relates to researchers reflecting on the research process and locating themselves in this process (Fook, 2002). Reflexivity involves a more sophisticated exploration of the processes at play facilitating an emergent understanding of social situations that takes into account the social context, experience and values of the researcher (Powell, 2002). Sue White advocates using reflexivity in social work practice as well as research as a means ‘of destabilisation, or problematization of taken-for-granted knowledge and day to day reasoning. Treated in this way, reflexivity becomes a process of looking inward and outward, to the social and cultural artefacts and forms of thought which saturate our practices’ (2001: 102). This process of taking time to problematise all aspects of a situation avoids the rigidity which rides roughshod over the nuances of the particular. It also allows an opportunity for destabilisation and self-awareness rather than blindly acting on the basis of policies and procedures, research findings or strategies.

Since a reflexive approach takes account of values and questions taken-for-granted assumptions it is an approach which sits very comfortably with the situated and value-based requirements of the social worker practitioner. As Ruckdeschel and Shaw argue, ‘… all forms of social work practice can benefit from a reflective stance … [but] reflective practice is of limited use unless the products of reflections are shared’ (2008: 299). An effective method of ensuring that these reflections are rigorous and shared is available through the practitioner engaging in research.

WHAT IS RESEARCH?

Before we can focus in on practitioner research we need a brief examination of what we mean by research itself. All research involves the use of rigorous and systematic methods to explore questions, problems and topics with the aim of gathering data that will inform greater understanding. The discovered data and understanding may be very specific, or general, depending on the type of research being undertaken and the type of data sought. Research can range from basic/scientific to an applied social investigation. Generally speaking, with basic research the investigation will be driven by the researcher’s interests and will be unrelated to immediate practical questions, problems or topics. In contrast, applied social research is more likely to be driven by social interests and be closely related to immediate practical questions, problems or topics (Stoecker, 2003).

Underpinning any research endeavour are key values associated with different research approaches and paradigms and these in turn will impact on the types of investigation undertaken. Positivism is an epistemological approach (theory of knowledge) which advocates the application of scientific methods to the discovery of social reality. This approach aims to reduce any possibility of contamination coming from the researcher themselves (researcher bias), the research equipment, the methods used, and the setting/laboratory or field setting, and is associated with the scientific methods found in the natural sciences. In contrast, the interpretivist approach requires researchers to investigate the subjective meaning of social reality. This approach is predicated on the belief that the social world is fundamentally different from the physical world and cannot be understood in all its complexity though the use of scientific methods.

There are two general approaches to gathering data – quantitative and qualitative – and these are not mutually exclusive. With the quantitative approach a researcher is more likely to remain objective and distant from the process and gather data which is often in the form of numbers. The data are analysed and interpreted using measurement and can be presented in the form of tables and charts. The types of methods associated with this approach are surveys, questionnaires and structured interviews. The qualitative approach is designed to allow for more complexity to emerge in the findings, thus allowing the intricacies of a situation to be acknowledged. Findings and data are often presented as prose. The interpretation of findings is more likely to be offered by the researcher and is therefore open to alternative interpretations, whereas with quantitative data the measurements and calculations will often speak for themselves. This approach lends itself to small-scale research that adopts methods of observation, unstructured interviews, focus groups and the use of narrative (Denscombe, 1998).

To summarise the differences between quantitative and qualitative:

The difference might be summarised by saying quantitative research is structured, logical, measured and wide. Qualitative research is more intuitive, subjective, and deep. This implies that some subjects are best investigated using quantitative whilst others, qualitative approaches will give better results. In some cases both methods can be used. (Bouma & Atkinson, 1995: 208)

In some research texts the two approaches will often be polarised. You will need to be cautious not to be too rigid in your understanding of these data gathering approaches.

TRIGGERS FOR SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH

There are numerous demands made upon social work research in what is a rapidly changing world. For example, in the UK people are generally living longer and healthier lives, but with increasing numbers of older people there is also an increase in the enduring health problems associated with ageing (see ONS/Social Trends 2009).¹ One example of this is the predicted impact on the cost of caring for an increasing number of older people with dementia (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 What’s distinctive about social work research?
• 2 Practitioner research – engaging with individuals, organisations and communities
• 3 The ethics of social work research
• 4 Service users, carers and social work research
• 5 Interviews and questionnaires
• 6 Focus groups
• 7 Observation, narrative and other approaches
• 8 Analysing data
• 9 Developing a research proposal and writing a research report
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index