Social Work Subject Guide — Open (and Alternative) Educational Resources - Social Work

This textbook was created to provide an introduction to research methods for BSW and MSW students, with particular emphasis on research and practice relevant to students at the University of Texas at Arlington. It provides an introduction to social work students to help evaluate research for evidence-based practice and design social work research projects. It can be used with its companion, A Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions by Rebecca L. Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo, or as a stand-alone textbook.

Our textbook guides graduate social work students step by step through the research process from conceptualization to dissemination. We center cultural humility, information literacy, pragmatism, and ethics and values as core components of social work research.

This short guidebook provides information about selecting a research topic and research questions, searching for literature, reading and understanding scholarly writing, and writing a literature review to synthesize what is known and what remains to be learned about a social problem. For students who appreciate the availability of resources on the internet, it also provides links to additional materials. It can be used with its companion textbook, Foundations of Social Work Research by Rebecca L. Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo, or as a stand-alone guide.

This book was written by MSW students as their final project for their Capstone class. Students were each assigned a chapter of the book to write to show that they had achieved competency as a Master’s level social worker. Chapters were assigned based on student interest and experience in certain areas of the field.

As an introductory textbook for social work students studying research methods, this book guides students through the process of creating a research project. Students will learn how to discover a researchable topic that is interesting to them, examine scholarly literature, formulate a proper research question, design a quantitative or qualitative study to answer their question, carry out the design, interpret quantitative or qualitative results, and disseminate their findings to a variety of audiences. Examples are drawn from the author's practice and research experience, as well as topical articles from the literature. The textbook is aligned with the Council on Social Work Education's 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Students and faculty can download copies of this textbook using the links provided in the front matter. As an open textbook, users are free to retain copies, redistribute copies (non-commercially), revise the contents, remix it with other works, and reuse for any purpose.

This text is intended for use in introductory social work classes at the college level. Chapter topics include the foundations and history of social work and social welfare; generalist social work; ethics and values; social policy; race & ethnicity; sex, sexism, & gender; LGBTQ+ clients; poverty and financial assistance; school social work; families and children; healthcare and disabilities; substance use; mental health; criminal justice; and older clients.