ABSTRACT
Social workers, as their title implies, have a practical function. Called into existence because of human needs, the urgency of these needs has always made a first claim upon their time and skill. Such interest as their ideas may hold for the readers of this volume lies rather in the empirical value of cumulative experience than in any special methodology or body of knowledge. The theories may be explicit in the form of 'case history outlines' of the facts which have been found relevant in the past, or they may be implicit in the attitude of the worker, guiding her attention and the course of discussion in interviews. It must be admitted, however, that up to the present time no very satisfactory method has been found for combining the type of record that is needed for research purposes with the type which is feasible or desirable in an organization devoted primarily to social service.
