Social work with groups of adolescents: a literature review

ABSTRACT

Social work with groups of adolescents is a constituent part of social work practice, research, and training. However, little is known about the overall characteristics of the academic production related to group work with this population. This literature review explores 112 articles in social work journals for the period 2000–2017 focusing on the characteristics of the journals and content. The presence of the topic is not evenly distributed and has an Anglophone origin. The focus of the articles is mainly on the methodology of intervention with active and participatory activities. Although the production is not abundant, articles promote theory and practice integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work with groups
• group work
• social work
• adolescents
• teens
• youth
• literature
• journals
• literature review

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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Notes

1. The Social Sciences and Psychology section was selected, because there is not a specific Social Work section.

2. Texts in languages other than English, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese were disregarded.

3. Only the journals with more than two publications are listed.

4. The H-index is an author-level metric that attempts to measure the productivity and citation impact of the publications of a scientist or scholar. Journal Impact Factor (cites) counts the number of citations received by documents from a journal and divides them by the total number of documents published in that journal.

5. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice; Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work; International Journal of Child & Family Welfare; Practice; Cadernos de Terapia Ocupacional; and The Family Journal.

6. In SJR the average H Index of the articles is 29, whereas the best situated social work journal of our list has an H Index of 207. In the JCR ranking, the average number for journal impact is 1,149, whereas the highest SW journal listed has an impact of 3,542.

7. Some articles combined more than one kind of activities.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte [FPU 15/ 05438] and Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad [CSO2016-78111-R].