2nd Edition

The Social Work Student's Research Handbook

By Dominique Moyse Steinberg Copyright 2015
    172 Pages
    by Routledge

    172 Pages
    by Routledge

    This second edition of The Social Work Student's Research Handbook provides an essential guide for social work students beginning to participate in research. Practical and easy to use, this comprehensive handbook provides instant access to the nuts and bolts of social work research. Each chapter in this second edition has been updated to reflect the dynamic and changing nature of social work research, and three new topical chapters have been included that offer new food for thought on research context and ethics and on the role of evidence in professional practice.

    The book is intended as a resource to complement the dense and heavy research books available. This text provides the tools students need to fully engage with their research and is an essential reference aid for use alongside professional literature for selecting a problem for social work study with consideration of context and ethics; identifying a design type; developing or selecting an instrument; developing a sampling strategy; collecting and analyzing data; and organizing, writing, disseminating, and utilizing results in a politically sensitive way.

    The Social Work Student’s Research Handbook is an invaluable resource for undergraduate and graduate social work students as well as practitioners new to the field as they apply what they’ve learned in research courses toward consuming research effectively, implementing original research projects, and ultimately, toward becoming an evidence-based practitioner.

    Introduction  1. Social Work Research: Context and Politics  2. Ethics  3. Evidence and Professional Social Work Practice  4. Problem Formulation: What to Study  5. Using the Literature  6. Working from Questions or Hypotheses  7. Variables  8. Assumptions  9. Design Options  10. Exploratory Design  11. Descriptive Design  12. Experimental Design  13. Correlational Design  14. Plausible Alternative Explanations  15. Practice Evaluation  16. Program Evaluation  17. Working Toward Reliability and Validity  18. Sampling  19. Data Collection  20. Data Analysis: An Overview  21. Qualitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Words  22. Quantitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Descriptive Statistics  23. Quantitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Inferential Statistics  24. Tests of Statistical Significance  25. Wrapping It Up

    Biography

    Dominique Moyse Steinberg is former Chair of the Social Group Work Sequence at Hunter College School of Social Work, USA, where she taught Social Group Work Practice for Group Work Majors, a Practice Lab, Research Methods, Basic, Advanced, and Program and Practice Evaluation, and an Integrative Writing Seminar. On the adjunct faculty as of 1986 Steinberg left HC in 1997 to teach at Smith College SSW until 2004, when she returned to HCSSW full time, assuming Chair of the sequence in 2005. A prolific writer with regular contributions to the professional literature, Steinberg has special interest in social work method, mutual aid, practice ethics and effectiveness, elder care, conflict resolution, and communication. On the Editorial Boards of Social Work With Groups and The Journal of Teaching in Social Work, in addition to being a member of AASWG since 1985 and Treasurer of AASWG since 2007, Steinberg is also a member of NASW and ACR and an ACSW Fellow. She currently teaches graduate research courses for Simmons College SSW online, advises thesis projects for Smith College SSW, offers elder-care resources on line (www.customeldercare.org), and is Director of Group Work Services for The Project for Team Conferencing and Social Group Work, Inc., a non-profit training agency in New York City (http://theteamconferenceandgroupworkproject.org).