Practice-Based Research in Social Work

Research, it is said, is rarely high on the agenda of social workers. However, during my time working alongside practitioners, I have learnt that invariably they ask the right questions and hold many of the skills to seek successful solutions. With the guidance of this new volume, most practitioners could undertake research, especially if they sought to develop practice-based research (PBR). PRB places practitioners at the heart of the research examining questions that ‘emerge from practice in ways that inform practice’ (p. 5). This has to be a good thing in an era when social workers are urged to be a thinking practitioner as proposed by the Social Work Task Force (2009) and the Munro Review (2012). We should be supporting, enabling and encouraging social workers to see research as ‘the norm’, not as the ‘add-on’ it has become. By engaging with Dodd and Epstein, the social worker's research fears should melt away. The authors lay bare the research ‘paradigm wars’; they discuss the concept of ‘gold standard’ research and the associated randomised control trials, which, for a newcomer to the field, can appear overwhelming in their demands. In its place, the authors present a manageable research process that values practitioner knowledge and introduces a systematic approach to achievable research.

Engineering ethics · Medical education · Norm (philosophy) · Political science · Public relations · Social research · Social science · Sociology · Work (physics) · Engineering · Law · Medicine · Mental Health and Patient Involvement · Psychology · Research in Social Sciences · Social Work Education and Practice · Social Work

• Financial Capability and Asset Building

  Open Access•Edward Scanlon, Cynthia K Sanders•Advances in Social Work•2017

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• Counselling “late women” - The experience of women seeking abortion in the eighteen to twenty-four-week gestational period

  Open Access•Trish Hayes, Chanel Keane et al.•Women s Studies International Forum•2019

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