“I Thought I Hated Data”: Preparing MSW Students for Data-driven Practice

Abstract

Social work is an applied profession using a combination of theory, research, and practice to meet the needs of client populations. First-hand experiential learning is central to social work education. Just as students learn clinical skills by interacting with clients in a practice setting, students need a forum to use real data to develop their skills in accessing, understanding, interpreting, and presenting answers to pertinent social work research questions. This paper describes one university's efforts to design and implement coursework opportunities for students to integrate the use of actual data to answer pertinent real-world research and evaluation questions.

Keywords:

• data-driven research
• data analysis
• research practice