Special Issue of Research on Social Work Practice

Abstract

Topic: Intervention Research for Social Work Practitioners

Guest Editor: Michael J. Holosko, PhD Pauline M. Berger Professor Family and Child Welfare

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2014

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) announces a call for papers to appear in a peer reviewed special edition entitled “Intervention Research for Social Work Practitioners.” Submissions can be conceptual, methodological, or empirical, are welcome to originate from any country, and can range across the continuum from micro to macro practice. Prior to writing your submission, please contact the guest editor via email below for additional author’s instructions, and to confirm that your topic is unique from others in the proposed publication.

Differentiated from evaluation research, which focuses on assessing processes and outcomes, intervention research is distinguished by its emphasis on the design and development of planned interventions, its theoretical basis, and producing positive change outcomes. Some suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

The history and development of intervention research

Planning effective interventions to research and evaluate

Planning and designing intervention research studies

Research designs of intervention studies

Advances in intervention research

Theoretical developments in intervention research

Methodological challenges in intervention research

Using mixed methods to evaluate intervention research

Assessing fidelity in intervention research

Outcomes of intervention research

Statistical issues and measuring change in intervention research

Disseminating intervention research to social work practitioners

Various case examples of evaluating interventions

International submissions will have the option to write their abstracts in both English and the language of the country of origin of the author(s). All submissions will be formatted in compliance with RSWPs instructions for authors found at: http://www.sagepub.com/journals/Journal200896/manuscriptSubmission. Articles for this special edition will be written in a compressed format, consisting of 15 pages of text and references, and a maximum of 3 figures, and/or tables. On behalf of RSWP and the guest editor, we look forward to your submissions.

Contact Information: Michael J. Holosko, PhD Pauline M. Berger Professor Family and Child Welfare School of Social Work University of Georgia 420 Tucker Hall Athens, GA 30602-7016 mholoso@uga.edu (706) 542-2707

Topic: Mental Health Practices with Urban Families Experiencing Multilevel Stressors

Guest Co-Editors: Jerrold M. Jackson, PhD, LCSW Mary M. McKay, PhD, LCSW McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research Silver School of Social Work New York University

Submission Deadline: 31 December 2013

There is an ongoing focus in the child and family mental health literature on evidence-based practices (EBPs) that strive to improve child mental health outcomes while also aiming to address caregiver needs and psychosocial stressors. Delivery of evidence-informed care to youth and their families will occur within the context of a changing healthcare system, shifts in reimbursement strategies from both Medicaid and private insurers, and increased demand on social work practitioners. More than ever, there is a need to develop, implement, and test culturally and contextually relevant EBPs that are effective in “real world” settings, particularly for focused on those most in need, poverty-impacted families living in under-resourced urban communities and experiencing simultaneous, multilevel stressors.

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) announces a call for papers and invites manuscripts on EBPs and empirically-supported service approaches involving families living through extremely stressful circumstances. The goal of this special issue is to promote the dissemination of empirically-based strategies with this population. In particular, this special issue seeks scholarly work along the following suggested topics:

Original outcome studies of empirically-supported mental health interventions involving highly stressed caregivers or families. Examples of studies include systematic reviews, meta-analyses, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), quasi-experimental trials, single-system designs, and other rigorous evaluation methods.

Effectiveness trials comparing outcomes of interventions for families along a continuum of stress levels.

Evaluations of empirically-based practices that enhance social work practitioners' effectiveness and enhance child and caregiver outcomes.

Research-supported strategies for engaging in interdisciplinary work that promotes improved outcomes for children and caregivers experiencing multilevel stressors.

Innovative strategies for integrating community mental health EBPs involving highly stressed families into health and/or educational settings.

All manuscripts meeting the submission criteria as listed above will undergo blind peer review, and manuscripts should reflect the author(s) original work and be formatted according to current APA format as found in the APA Manual. There is no page limit on submissions. Completed manuscripts should be submitted via email as two Microsoft Word files (title page and manuscript) by the submission deadline stated above, subject line “RSWP Special Issue”. Submissions should be directed to Jerrold M. Jackson, PhD, LCSW, via email at jerrold.jackson@nyu.edu.

Editorial Policy

Research on Social Work Practice is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the assessment methods and outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance. Interventions include behavior analysis and therapy, psychotherapy or counseling with individuals, case management/care coordination, education, supervision, practice involving couples, families, or small groups, advocacy, community practice, organizational management, and the evaluation of social policies. At least one author of a submitted article must be a professional social worker, and/or the interventions evaluated must have been provided by professional social workers.

The journal will primarily serve as an outlet for the publication of:

Original reports of empirically-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice;

Original reports of empirical studies on the development and validation of assessment methods useful in social work research or practice; and

Original systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice. The websites of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations provide exemplary guidelines for the design and conduct of systematic reviews, and authors contemplating submitting such studies are urged to follow these standards. The two types of systematic reviews considered for publication are:

Systematic reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention or assessment method, or

Systematic reviews of different psychosocial interventions applicable to clients with a particular psychosocial problem.

The journal welcomes empirical research appropriately derived from a variety of etiological and interventive theories, as well as studies which focus on evaluation and assessment issues not based upon formal theoretical frameworks. Studies using diverse methodologies, such as group or single-system research designs, and/or quantitative and qualitative approaches, are invited, as are interdisciplinary works. Replication studies are welcome, as are well-designed studies with negative findings or reports of treatment failures. Authors are encouraged to submit only articles of the highest quality for editorial review and possible publication. The submission of seriously flawed or marginal studies is discouraged. Reports of inferential statistics involving significant differences must be accompanied by suitable measures (and a discussion of their clinical importance) of effect sizes and/or proportions of variance potentially accounted for by an intervention.

Manuscripts which do not fit into one of the above categories should not be submitted, and if received will be returned to the author un-reviewed. Occasionally other types of submissions apart from those listed above are published in the journal (guest editorials, research center descriptions), but these are usually invited and accepted at the discretion of the Editor.

Inappropriate Submissions: The journal does not usually publish surveys, program descriptions, theoretical, philosophical or conceptual works, correlational investigations, retrospective predictor studies, purely methodological articles, descriptive studies, or needs assessments. Authors are urged to submit such studies to the many other social work journals which do not have the intervention-research focus of Research on Social Work Practice.

The journal does publish book reviews, and the authors of newly published books who believe that their book’s subject matter is congruent with the focus of the journal are encouraged to contact the Editor with respect to arranging a review, as are individuals who themselves wish to author a book review of a newly published book. The submission of unsolicited book reviews is welcome, providing the work relates to research on social work practice. Book reviews should be formatted in strict APA-style, and submitted as an email attachment in MicroSoft Word, to the Editor, at Bthyer@fsu.edu. A copy of RSWP Guidelines for Book Reviews is also available from the Editor, upon request.

The journal publishes occasional special issues devoted to a particular topic and readers with an interest in proposing a topic for such a special issue and to serve as a Guest Editor for that issue are welcome to contact the Editor.

How to submit a manuscript: The journal requires authors to use the MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL web-based portal to submit their manuscripts. The submission portal is available via the link below:

Visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rswp

Submissions are required to be prepared using the formatting standards found in the 6th Edition (2010) of the APA Publication Manual. Authors are specifically asked to adhere to the relevant Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) found on pp. 245– 252 of the APA Manual. Reports of quasi-experiments or randomized controlled trials must also include a participant flowchart (see page 253 of the APA Manual). The Editor is available to consult with you about any questions you may have regarding complying with these standards. They have been adopted to help promote consistency in research reporting, to try and further elevate the standards of work appearing in Research on Social Work Practice, and to ultimately improve the credibility of research findings available to the profession and the public. The abstracts of research articles must include the following headings: Objective:, Methods:, Results:, Conclusions:.

All manuscripts should include an abstract on a separate page that contains no more than 150 words, and also a separate title page (designated as Title Page) which includes: 1) title of the article; 2) corresponding author's full name, current position, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers; 3) co-author(s)' full name(s) and affiliation(s); 4) up to five key words as they should appear if they were to be published. Manuscripts will not be considered for submission if they do not include these elements. Tables and/or Figures are to be included when necessary to depict the results. There is no specific limit on the total number of pages, table or figures.

Authors submitting manuscripts are protected by common law against the unauthorized use of their unpublished work. Specifically, an unpublished manuscript is considered to be a confidential or privileged paper. Reviewers will be asked to destroy or return the manuscript after their review is completed; in addition, reviewers will be asked not to circulate, quote, cite, or refer to the unpublished work in any way unless specific permission is granted by the author.

Artwork Submissions

High-resolution figures should be uploaded as separate electronic files, with callouts for each in the text. Figure legends should include full explanations of the figures and be typewritten double-spaced with numbers corresponding to those on the figure files themselves. All figures must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, and PDF Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for vector art (line art). Permission for use of the copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. All artwork must be camera ready.

Tables

Tables should be numbered consecutively corresponding to in-text citation. Each table should be prepared on a separate page at the end of the text document and preferably should be no larger than a single page. Include a brief descriptive title of the table and a footnote with explanation of any abbreviations. All tables must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Elements in tables should be separated by tabs, not cells or lines.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose any commercial, financial, or other associations that could pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted article and these must be disclosed on the title page at the time of submission.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

Authors should list all funding sources related to the study and to the article preparation.

Copyright

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be required to complete an electronic copyright transfer form. From SAGETRACK website “Corresponding Author Center” choose the correct manuscript from “Manuscripts with Decisions” and from the ACTION box on the far right side, choose “Contributor Form.” After reading the form and completing the appropriate boxes, clicking the “I accept” box will confirm appropriate copyright transfer.

Authors are required to submit written permission from the original publisher to reprint copyright-protected material, including quoted material of 300 words or more from a single source (journal article or book).

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in this journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal should not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar content.

Publish Ahead of Print With Onlinefirst

Onlinefirst is a feature in which completed articles are published online prior to their inclusion in a print issue, offering authors the advantage of making their research accessible to the public in a more timely manner. Only online subscribers can view these PDFs, but abstracts are available to the public to view for free. Each Onlinefirst manuscript is citable by the publication date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), providing a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment. You can cite Onlinefirst articles as follows:

Author’s last name, first initials. Article title. Journal title. Prepublished month day, year; DOI: 10.1177/0123456789123456

Once your article has completed the production process and before it is published in a print issue, it will be posted online. You can access RSWP Onlinefirst articles on the Web at http://rswp.sagepub.com/pap.dtl. Once posted online, articles may not be retracted or edited. If your article is not completed prior to its publication date, it will not go on Onlinefirst but will be posted online with the issue in which it is published.

The journal uses a blind peer review system to evaluate manuscripts, and the expertise of the Editorial Board members is augmented by the extensive use of Guest Reviewers. Most authors receive an initial editorial decision within two months of submission, accompanied by constructive peer commentary. Most articles eventually accepted for publication undergo extensive author-completed revisions, based on peer-review commentary, prior to acceptance. The journal has a modest backlog of accepted manuscripts, thus the authors of accepted manuscripts can expect a lag of about 6 months or less from final acceptance to print publication. However the journal has a publish-ahead-of-print service in that the final, corrected and accepted version of their paper will be published electronically on the journal’s website, with a DOI. This will permit its read access to the community of scholars, students, and practitioners months ahead of print publication. These articles will be both citable and downloadable. Articles are published in the general order of their acceptance.

An invitation to join the journal’s Editorial Board is published in the journal every three years, prior to the appointment of a new board. All readers possessing suitable backgrounds in social work practice and research are welcome to nominate themselves to the Editorial Board. In addition, individuals such as experienced MSWs or doctoral students who wish to serve as occasional Guest Reviewers are welcome to contact the Editor about their interest.