Abstract
This addition to the Transforming Social Work Practice series is for undergraduate and postgraduate social work students and other inexperienced researchers undertaking a social work research project. The chapter contents follow the project stages outlined in the introduction. The first three chapters look at reviewing the literature, choice of research design/method and sampling, followed by four chapters on qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis. Chapters eight and nine focus, respectively, on writing up the results or findings and drawing out the discussion and conclusions. Throughout, the authors draw on examples from their published research, and from student projects, to illustrate diverse approaches to different aspects of design. Activities and points to note are highlighted and each chapter concludes with summary points.
How best to achieve an appropriate balance between breadth and depth is an integral challenge for any introductory textbook on research methods. What kinds of knowledge might be assumed? What does the novice researcher really need or want to know? The choice here seems to have been to pursue breadth with occasional depth, so that each chapter contains an array of topics for the reader to dip into. This works well when the rationale for what is omitted, skimmed over or explored in more depth is apparent. So the decision to devote the whole of the final chapter to the discussion, conclusion and recommendations section of the dissertation, or research report, reflects the importance of this stage and the difficulties it often presents for inexperienced researchers. Elsewhere the selection of topics for treatment in depth or otherwise may seem random. For example, in the chapter Reviewing the Literature, considerable space is given to standard techniques for searching bibliographic databases, even though such guidance is widely available elsewhere. It would be helpful to have more information relating to fundamental design decisions that novice researchers wrestle with such as: the choice of systematic review as a research design in its own right; the balance between narrative and systematic approaches to a literature review within an empirical design; how to approach the tasks of appraisal and synthesis.
Designing even the simplest research project involves negotiating a series of interlinked decisions and trade-offs. Supervisors of student research projects may search in vain for accessible answers to the kinds of questions they hear most often. Thus, the chapter on Sampling Techniques covers different approaches to sampling but does not focus on the most pressing questions for any novice researcher – how many subjects/respondents/cases do I need to answer my research question? How and where do I gain access to them? Similarly, the chapter on Quantitative Methods describes a range of designs, including RCTs which are rarely found in student projects, but gives few pointers to the principles and techniques of questionnaire design and online surveys. A puzzling omission is any consideration of ethical aspects of research and the process of ethical review. Both play an important part in various design decisions and are particularly significant for social work research when it involves vulnerable participants and sensitive topics. There are also references throughout to research, audit and service evaluation as different kinds of project. An explanation of the differences between these tasks, how these impact on research design and the differing expectations for research governance and ethical review would seem essential for anyone new to the field of social work research.