Social Work Research and Evaluation

Examined Practice for Action

Elizabeth DePoy, Stephen Gilson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781452259642
• eBook ISBN: 9781483323879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

Social Work Research and Evaluation applies systematically developed research knowledge to social work practice and emphasizes the "doing" of social work as a reciprocal avenue for generating research evidence and social work knowledge. Using the Examined Practice Model, authors Elizabeth G. DePoy and Stephen F. Gilson present research as the identification of a problem and then proceed to evaluate the efficacy of social work practice in its resolution. Diverse theories, actions, and sets of evidence from a range of professional and disciplinary perspectives are included to underscore the importance of integrating evaluation and practice in research.

1 Introduction to Examined Practice

• Introduction to the Rationale for the Text 3
  • Examining the Name 5
  • The Model of Examined Practice 6
  • Primary Principles of Examined Practice 7
  • Turning to Philosophy 8
  • Knowing How, Knowing That 11
• Illustration of Examined Practice in Diverse Social Work Settings 13
  • Exemplars 13
• Roles and Responsibilities of “Examined Practitioners” 13
  • How to Use This Book 14
• Summary 14
• References 14

• “Social work practice consists of the professional application of social work values, principles, and techniques to one or more of the following ends: helping people obtain tangible services; counseling and psychotherapy with individuals, families, and groups; helping communities or groups provide or improve social and health services; and participating in legislative processes” (NASW, 2016).
• “Competency 4: Engage in Practice-Informed Research and Research-Informed Practice:
• Social workers understand quantitative and qualitative research methods and their respective roles in advancing a science of social work and in evaluating their practice. Social workers know the principles of logic, scientific inquiry, and culturally informed and ethical approaches to building knowledge. Social workers understand that evidence that informs practice derives from multi-disciplinary sources and multiple ways of knowing. They also understand the processes for translating research findings into effective practice. Social workers:
  • use practice experience and theory to inform scientific inquiry and research;
  • apply critical thinking to engage in analysis of quantitative and qualitative research methods and research findings; and
  • use and translate research evidence to inform and improve practice, policy, and service delivery.” (CSWE, 2015)

Introduction to the Rationale for the Text

Over the years that we have been teaching in social work, students often enter research classes with trepidation, fearing the material and questioning the relevance of research thinking and action to practice. Yet, when they complete our classes, they master the logic and precision of inquiry, thought, and action such that they begin to see both not only as mutually informative but as inseparable and thus essential to their professional development. We have therefore written Social Work Research and Evaluation: Examined Practice for Action to guide deliberately informed social work practice in which the essentials of systematic thinking and action are seamlessly woven into a model for social work knowing and doing.

It is not surprising that, over the profession’s history, research and practice have been somewhat distinct from one another. As reflected in the quotations from the National Association of Social Workers (NASW, 2016) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE, 2015) above, practice is characterized as the activation of knowledge, skills, and values, while research and evaluation are both considered to be a set of processes anchored in systematic traditions of science. Moreover, research and evaluation have not only been distinguished from practice but have been differentiated from one another as well.

Models such as evidence-based practice (Stout & Hayes, 2005), evidence-guided practice (Gitterman & Knight, 2013), empirical practice (Nugent, Sieppert, & Hudson, 2001; Grinnell & Unrau, 2011), social work advocate as researcher (Maschi & Youdin, 2012), evaluation practice (DePoy & Gilson, 2003), and critical thinking (Gambrill, 2012) among others have been proposed to bridge the gap between research and practice. So why have we written yet another book explicating a new model? Similar to other models, Social Work Research and Evaluation: Examined Practice for Action integrates systematic ways of knowing with social work doing to guide contemporary and informed comprehensive social work in its full diversity of concerns and domains. But examined practice goes further, anchoring its conceptual and practice components on current thinking in which knowing and doing coexist in a network of globalism, technology, and postpostmodern marriage of previous disciplinary strangers (Nealon, 2012). For example, social work and engineering can now partner to systematically conceptualize, determine need, create, and test outcomes of innovations that result in improving the lives and esteem of individuals who need adaptive equipment. Computer programmers and social workers can use the common language of systematic thinking and action to collaborate on web-based health education to reach large populations who were previously unserved. And clinical social workers can engage in thinking and action that result in knowledge accepted as legitimate to advance social work as well as other fields such as public policy and business. These points are exhibited in the exemplars that work throughout the book to illustrate concepts and skills.

Further moving beyond unidirectional evidence-based practice and similar models, examined practice not only applies systematically developed research knowledge to social work practice but also identifies and provides a framework in which social work doing itself, instead of being labeled as practice wisdom (Rubin & Bellamy, 2012) or research informed (Plath, 2013), is a credible, reciprocal avenue for generating research evidence and thus for creating important social work knowing.

Examined practice proposes that all social work doing and knowing are value-based and thus evaluative of the nature of social problems and their resolutions despite the euphemisms and arguments that social work does not focus on identifying and solving problems (Cohen, 2011). For example, as presented in his own words below, Cohen uses the phrase “more desirable future” to supplant the term problem. We ask, “more desirable than what?” and point to the “what” as the undesirable or problem to be ameliorated or situation to be changed.

Throughout its history, social work has been concerned with creating a more desirable future by changing the existing and future conditions of individuals, groups, and communities through planned interventions in social systems and their environments. Viewed in this context, the social work practitioner can be seen as a designer who is concerned with helping clients make choices that will bridge the gap between their present situation and a desired future situation. (Cohen, 2011, p. 341)

Of critical importance to understanding and using examined practice in all parts of social work is the nature of the term problem. In examined practice it is defined in the philosophical sense (McCarthy, 2013), denoting not only personal issues and undesirables but inclusive of value-based puzzling situations to be engaged and unraveled by social work. And contemporary models of research such as appreciative inquiry inform an understanding of problems not simply as devalued phenomena but rather as surrounded by resources that can be harnessed to conceptualize, analyze, and engage with them (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2005). Systematic thinking techniques such as force field analysis and codesign, as discussed in Chapter 2, join research methods creating an entry into the process of examined practice. So even problem analysis, the first and most fundamental step in examined practice, integrates logic and values. This marriage erases a major distinction between “pure” or “bench” research and evaluation research, a principle fundamental to examined practice. As illustrated throughout, all research, despite its philosophical tradition, begins with a judgment of what is important to know and then what theoretical lenses will be used, revised, or countered through the process of inquiry. Thus, along with other authors and scholars (Nealon, 2012; Letherby, Scott, & Williams, 2013), we agree that separating values from research is not possible.

As stated by Daniel (2011), “not only is the concept of the value-free ideal impossible to achieve in real life, but so is the overarching notion of objective science at all” (p. 1).

Examining the Name

We have chosen to name this model of social work knowing and doing examined practice because of the term’s rich history and definitional consistency with the tenets of the systematically conducted social work knowing and doing. The English usage of the word examine dates back to the late thirteenth century. It derives from the Latin word exāmināre, defined as

1. to weigh, examine, test
2. to observe, test, or i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Brief Contents
• Detailed Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Authors
• Section I
• 1 Introduction to Examined Practice
• 2 Problems, Issues, and Needs (What, Why, How, When, Where)
• 3 Setting Goals and Objectives for Reflexive Intervention
• 4 Exploring Outcomes
• 5 Sharing Examined Practice to Generate Social Work Knowledge
• Section II
• 6 Two Design Traditions and Then Mixing Them
• 7 The Role of Literature in Examined Practice
• 8 Questions, Hypotheses, and Queries: The Basis for Rigor Assessment
• 9 Design in Both Traditions
• 10 Setting and Protecting the Boundaries of a Study
• 11 Obtaining Information
• 12 Analysis
• 13 Putting the Model to Work
• Glossary
• Index