References
- JamesLeiby A History of Social Work and Social Welfare in the United States 1978 Columbia University Press New York
- The Task Force on Quality in Graduate Social Work Education, formed by the American Association of Schools of Social Work is the most prominent of the recent critics.
- The Pursuit of Excellence in Social Work Education Journal of Social Work Education 1 Winter 1986 74 86 See in particular their heaviliy annotated article
- Mary WirtaMachtF.W.Seidl The Wisconsin Ph.D. in Social Welfare: An Evaluation Summary 1978
- S.P.Robbinset al. Academic Productivity in Social Work 1985 Council on Social Work Education
- A.RubinPowell Gender and Publication Rates: A Reassessment of Population Data Social Work 32 4 1987 317 320 S.P. Robbins, et al. Academic Productivity in Social Work. they published slightly higher estimates than (1985) Council on Social Work Education. A. Ivanoff, S. Kirk, Gender and Publication Rates: Issues Overlooked. However Social Work 33 1 (1988) 69–70. severely criticized the Rubin and Powell study for accepting inflated, self-reported data and for other biases that may have overstated productivity. It is ironic, but still characteristic of social work research, that even studies of scholarship are poorly conducted.
- A.RubinP.J.JohnsonK.L.DeWeaver Direct Practice Interests of MSW Students: Changes from Entry to Graduation Journal of Social Work Education 22 2 1986 98 108 K.R. Wedel, D.M. Pilcher, J.H. Rosenthal, Social Ideology and Motivation of Social Work Students: A Cross National Study. Journal of International and Comparative Social Welfare (June 1988) 12–23.
- Y.HasenfeldR.Hoefer USA-Social Services and Social Work under Reaganism B.Munday The Crisis in Welfare 1989 St. Martins Press Hertfordshire, England 205
- A.RubinP.J.JohnsonK.L.DeWeaver Direct Practice Interests of MSW Students: Changes from Entry to Graduation Journal of Social Work Education 22 2 1986 98 108
- Y.HasenfeldR.Hoefer USA-Social Services and Social Work under Reaganism B.Munday The Crisis in Welfare 1989 St. Martins Press Hertfordshire, England 205 This is perhaps an allowable literary exaggeration, otherwise they undermine their own authority, both having stayed in social work. More important than emigratiion is the problem of attraction. The unfortunate scholarly reputation of social work may be discouraging highly qualified candidates.
- Mary WirtaMachtF.W.Seidl The Wisconsin Ph.D. in Social Welfare: An Evaluation Summary 1978 concides with more informal impressions by may social work educators: bright students are disappointed by their professors. Many of these swith to other programs or simply leave schoo, judging the prospect of two years or so in social work training to be a waste of time.
- J.H.Karges Reclassification: Is there a future in Public Welfare for the Trained Social Worker Social Work 28 1983 427 434 P.J. Pecora, M. Austin, Declassification of Social Service Jobs: Issues and Strategies. Social Work 28 (1983) 421–426.
- In particular see DeborahShapio Agencies and Foster Children 1976 Columbia University Press New York There was quite a fashion in the late sixties and early seventies of reporting findings that favored the work efforts of untrained workers over those of more credentialed professionals.
- D.A.JohnsonD.Hoff Licensing Exams: How Valid are they? Social Work 32 2 March/April 1987 159 162
- EverettRogers Diffusion of Innovation 2nd Edition 1971 the Free Press claims that the relative advantage of any innovation, and this includes social service programs, accounts for between 50 and 87% of the adoption decisions. Yet these estimates are based on studies that only covered technical devices amenable to clear cost/benefit estimates (in particular the decisions to invest in automatic milking machines among farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania). Decisions to adopt programs among social welfare agencies have been given very little systematic and credible scrutiny. This indeed is the center of the scholarly problem.
- The single exception for the human services was L.I.SteinM.A.Test Alternative to Mental Hospital Treatment Archives of General Psychiatry 36 October 1979 1055 1056 They demonstrated that community care for the chronic mental patient was possible although more expressive (in direct costs) than hospital care. Ironically, this study has been extensively cited to justify community care programs funded at very meager levels. In spite of its questionable applicability to either urban settings or to the typical client group that has little family support, this is a gem of a study and a splendid example of what I refer to as good outcome research. It emerged from a reanalysis of the Rubin review as the only credible study from approximately 6,500 that appeared in print during his target years: see
- A.Rubin Practice Effectiveness: More Grounds for Optimism Social Work 30 6 1985 469 476 W.M. Epstein, Rational Claims to Effectiveness in Social Work's Critical Literature. Social Science Journal 27 2 (1980) W.J. Reid, P. Hanrahan, Recent Evaluation of Social Work: Grounds for Optimism. None of the other recent attempts to find rigor in the social work research have done even this well: Social Work 27 (July 1982) P. Hanrahan, W.J. Reid, Choosing Effective Interventions. social Work 29 (January/February 1984) 51–57. Joel Fischer: The Social Work Revolution Social Work (May 1981) 199–207. L. Videka-Sherman, Metaanalysis of Research on Social Work Practice in Mental Health. The best of these kinds of reviews Social Work 33 4 (1988) 325–338. included a weak base of studies and still only reported very modest positive results
- P.T.Howlinget al. Methodological Issues in Child Maltreatment Research Social Work Research and Abstracts September 1989 6
- As prominent examples see: B.Wootton Social Science and Social Patholody 1959 George Allen and Unwin London Joel Fischer, Has Mighty Casework Struck Out? A Review. Social Work 18 (January 1973) 5–20. Katherine Wood, Casework Effectiveness: A New Look at the Research Evidence. Social Work (November 1978) 437–458. Joel Fischer, Does Anything Work?. Journal of Social Service Research (Spring 1978) Stephen Segal, Research on the Outcome of Social Work Therapeutic Intervention: A Review of the Literature. Journal of Health and Social Behavior 13 (1975) Lipton, R. Martinson, J. Wilks, The Effectiveness of Correctional Treatment. A few examples of similar pieces in allied disciplines include: (1975) Praeger. New York. E. Bergin, The Evaluation of Therapeutic Outcomes. S.GarfieldA.E.Bergain Handbook of Psychotherapy and Behavior Change (1972) John Wiley and Sons. New York.
- T.D.CookW.R.Shadish Metaevaluation: An Assessment of the Congressionally Mandated Evaluation System for Community Mental Health Centres G.J.StahlerW.R.Tash Innovative Approaches to Mental Health Evaluation 1981 Academic Press New York
- W.M.Epstein Confirmational Response Bias among Social Work Journals Science, Technology and Human Values 15 1 January 1990 9 38 Two versions of a manuscript—one purporting to demonstrate the effectiveness of social work and the other its ineffectiveness in the treatment of a psychogenic disorder—were sent to more than one hundred social work journals and a variety of journals in allied disciplines. The journals were randomly assigned to two groups, one that received the positive version of the pseudomanuscript and one that received the negative version. The quantitative findings suggest a tendency to accept manuscripts that support the field's effectiveness, a very human bias, although one that should be prevented in scientific reviews.
- W.M.Epstein Confirmational Response Bias among Social Work Journals Science, Technology and Human Values 15 1 January 1990 9 38 “Comparison of the social work reviews both to common expectations for scientific quality and to the best reviews from the ‘allied’ journals challenge claims for the scientific authority of the field.” Referee reviews from prestigious as well as nonprestigious social work journals were not knowledgeable, scientifically astute, or objective. In all but one case, the highest quality reviews came from journals that did not originate in social work settings. “However an analysis of the referees' reviews that accompanied the journals' decisions to accept or to reject the submission go beyond a simple test of the field's biases to an assessment of its competence to conduct scientific inquiry itself.”
- S.C.Wakefield Psychotherapy, Distributive Justice and Social Work: Distributive Justice as a Conceptual Framework for Social Work Social Service Review 62 2 1988 187 210 S.C. Wakefield, Psychotherapy, Distributive Justice and Social Work: Psychotherapy and the Pursuit of Justice. Social Science Review 62 3 (1988) 353–382.
- ColinPiele Research Paradigms in Social Work: From Stalemate to Creative Synthesis Social Service Review March 1988 All three of Piele's new syntheses substitute a large degree of subjectivism for rigorous clinical research “in the development of knowledge.” There are realities, he claims, preceding research that are as valuable for social work as the objective assessment of outcomes. This new subjectivity of research is caught up with the new subjectivity of practice in which the “clinic” has replaced the clinical setting as the basic abstraction of social work. The “clinic” is a privitized, practitioner-controlled ritualization of responses to psychological distress. Clients approach expert therapists whose efficacy is implicitly proven. In contrast, the clinic is a very tentative intervention through which social problems are handled, sometimes by psychological approaches but very often with more material responses. Distinctions in social service strategies, the nature of proof and questions of social work's path into the future would be just so many pettifogging professional issues but for their profound resonance with telling social motives and policy decisions. Social work has social meaning even if it does not control its own uses. However, its contentment with its own merit, a conceit of ambition at the expenses of the poor and lower status groups, is very disturbing. A self-certifying practice and a subjective body of research allow professional satisfaction with “clinical” treatment to displace attention to recipient populations; service workers, not recipients, become the justifying purpose of social welfare. It is all very well to draw inspiration from any source in order to develop the social service production functions that constitute the central tenets of social work's claims to professional standing. However the effectiveness of these services must be rigorously tested if the field is to gain a credible authority. Piele and many others like him suggest that this is not necessary, that these proofs need not be tough and emperical. The recent fashion of “single subject designs” in social work see
- MartinBloomJoelFischer Evaluation Practice: Guidelines for the Accountable Professional 1982 Prentice Hall R.A. Polster, M.A. Lynch, Single Subject Designs. R.M.Grinnell Jr. Social Work Research and Evaluation (1982) also flatters the field's preference for subjective proofs. Yet small, convenience samples are antithetical to basic scientific requirements.
Further reading The field should face up to its epistemic fix. If social work accepts false comforts such as Peile's new syntheses, then it must risk demise as a professional entity. Yet if it denies itself a complaisant self-certification then it must deal with recalcitrant agencies, inadequate practitioners, short research dollars, a hostile political environment and all of the customary ambiguities of research even when conducted under the best of conditions. I would much prefer this latter course.
- PaulMattickJr. Social Knowledge 1986 M.E. Sharpe 119
- William M. Epstein “Economic and Social Development in the Third World: The End of Romance,” (unpublished) and William M. Epstein “Random Controlled Trials in the Chinese Context,” in LS Kai… (in press).
- Howard University to Raise Admissions Standards and Close Some Departments Chronicle of Higher Education March 13, 1991