ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we present five of the most commonly utilised methods in social research – observation and ethnographic work, focus groups, interviews, surveys and content analysis – as well as encouraging researchers to consider creative, arts-based research methods. We also acknowledge the need for First Nations epistemological sovereignty and recognise that First Nations’ methods for gathering data, sharing knowledge and storytelling have existed for millennia. As we have consistently highlighted in this book, research is a political project, a process by which certain knowledges are prioritised and voices are privileged. Social workers need to be aware of the ways in which research can be used to serve, maintain or disrupt the status quo and that without ethical rigour and commitment to reflexivity, social research can be used to maintain colonial forces and empirical paradigms which only further marginalise the populations social workers are positioned to work alongside. This chapter concludes by identifying a range of social work practice skills that are required to successfully undertake research methods and places emphasis on the way in which key social work skills are highly applicable and transferable to research contexts.
