ABSTRACT

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.

chapter |3 pages

Introduction

chapter 2|7 pages

Ethics

chapter 4|6 pages

Problem Formulation: What to Study

(Getting started)

chapter 5|7 pages

Using the Literature

(Who has said what about this already? So what?)

chapter 6|4 pages

Working from Questions or Hypotheses

(To ask or to test? That is the question)

chapter 7|7 pages

Variables

(A fancy term for a simple idea, that's all)

chapter 8|3 pages

Assumptions

(Take note! They can make an ass of u and me)

chapter 9|4 pages

Design Options

(So, what's the overall strategy?)

chapter 10|3 pages

Exploratory Design

(Is anything going on out there?)

chapter 11|3 pages

Descriptive Design

(Taking a snapshot)

chapter 12|5 pages

Experimental Design

(This causes that … I think!)

chapter 13|8 pages

Correlational Design

(Actually, I don't know if this causes that, but they sure seem to “go” together)

chapter 14|4 pages

Plausible Alternative Explanations

(How do you know it wasn't …?)

chapter 15|7 pages

Practice Evaluation

(So, are you doing good stuff or what?)

chapter 16|6 pages

Program Evaluation

(So just how good are we?)

chapter 17|7 pages

Working Toward Reliability and Validity

(Is your ruler correct? And are you getting to the heart of the matter?)

chapter 18|10 pages

Sampling

(Going to the source)

chapter 19|6 pages

Data Collection

(Getting to the answers)

chapter 20|6 pages

Data Analysis: An Overview

(Okay, you've got the answers … now what?)

chapter 21|5 pages

Qualitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Words

(How many pages to look at?)

chapter 22|13 pages

Quantitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Descriptive Stats

(Yes, you can)

chapter 23|12 pages

Quantitative Data Analysis: Making Sense of Inferential Stats

(Yes, you can … really!)

chapter 24|8 pages

Tests of Statistical Significance

(Getting confident!)

chapter 25|3 pages

Wrapping it up

(Endnote)