The Social Work Student's Research Handbook

Dominique Moyse Steinberg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138844094
• eBook ISBN: 9781317549536
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Social Work

This second edition of The Social Work Student's Research Handbook provides an essential guide for social work students beginning to participate in research. Practical and easy to use, this comprehensive handbook provides instant access to the nuts and bolts of social work research. Each chapter in this second edition has been updated to reflect the dynamic and changing nature of social work research, and three new topical chapters have been included that offer new food for thought on research context and ethics and on the role of evidence in professional practice.

The book is intended as a resource to complement the dense and heavy research books available. This text provides the tools students need to fully engage with their research and is an essential reference aid for use alongside professional literature for selecting a problem for social work study with consideration of context and ethics; identifying a design type; developing or selecting an instrument; developing a sampling strategy; collecting and analyzing data; and organizing, writing, disseminating, and utilizing results in a politically sensitive way.

The Social Work Student's Research Handbook is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate social work students as well as practitioners new to the field as they apply what they've learned in research courses toward consuming research effectively, implementing original research projects, and ultimately, toward becoming an evidence-based practitioner.

Index

• accidental samples 100
• accountability 30, 81, 83
• approval 11
• assent 12
• association 140, 149–150
• assumptions: applications 44–45
  • defined 4, 44
  • exercises 46
  • key concepts 44
  • points to remember 46
  • types 45

• back-and-forth thinking 21–22, 119
• bar charts 125
• bias 7, 54, 105, 117

• Campbell Systematic Reviews 28
• case studies 52
• causation 60
• central tendency: defined 123
  • mean 128–129
  • measures of 127–129
  • median 128
  • mode 127–128
• children 12
• chi-square test 147–148
• citations 30
• clinical research see (practice evaluation)
• cluster samples 98–99
• Cochrane Reviews 28
• Code of Ethics (NASW) 5–6, 8–9
• coercion 10
• collaboration 75
• Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program 11, 13
• commonalities 34
• competence 5–6, 8–9
• conceptual connectors 32
• conceptual variables 37–38
• concurrent validity 91
• construct validity 91–92
• consumer empowerment 81
• content validity 91–92
• context for social work research: implications 6–7
  • key concepts 4
  • points to remember 7
  • politics 4–5
• contextual view 6
• contingency tables 126
• control groups 58–59
• convenience samples 100
• correlated t test 148
• correlation coefficients 150
• correlational...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Social work research: context and politics
• Ethics
• Evidence and professional social work practice
• Problem formulation: what to study
• Using the literature
• Working from questions or hypotheses
• Variables
• Assumptions
• Design options
• Exploratory design
• Descriptive design
• Experimental design
• Correlational design
• Plausible alternative explanations
• Practice evaluation
• Program evaluation
• Working toward reliability and validity
• Sampling
• Data collection
• Data analysis: an overview
• Qualitative data analysis: making sense of words
• Quantitative data analysis: making sense of descriptive stats
• Quantitative data analysis: making sense of inferential stats
• Tests of statistical significance
• Wrapping it up
• Index