About the Book
This accessible book is based on the author’s extensive practical experience of carrying out and teaching research in the social work field. Social work research is shown to be both a distinctive academic enterprise and a task that can be accomplished effectively in line with the values and ethical principles that lie at the discipline’s core.
Doing Social Work Research helps researchers to relate ‘methodology’ to ‘method’, so that they can make authoritative decisions about how to turn initial research questions into valid and feasible investigative strategies. In doing so, it introduces and evaluates a wide range of approaches across the spectrum of social work research.
Building on this, the book provides detailed guidance on how to organize the research task, paying close attention to the practicalities of planning, preparation, implementation and management of investigations.
Doing Social Work Research features:
• A comprehensive overview of social work research methods
• Detailed guidance on how to carry out research in social work
• Illustrative examples of research practice from personal experience
• Effective links between core social work values, purposes, methodologies and research practices
This book is a valuable resource for social work students and practitioners carrying out research projects as well as practicing researchers and research educators in the discipline.
Contents
• Introduction: a challenging task?
• Drivers, demands and constraints in social work research
• ‘What works’: evidence for practice?
• Critical perspectives: the view from outside
• Leading the way? Social work research and service users
• From methodology to method: quantity and evidence
• Critical and interpretive approaches: what’s going on here?
• Committed research: models and methods
• Making it happen
• Putting it all together
• The value of social work research
About the Author / Editor
Roger Smith teaches and researches in social work at De Montfort University, UK. He worked in residential care before qualifying as a social worker in 1980. He then joined the Probation Service, working mainly with young offenders and subsequently held a policy development role with a national children’s organisation.
