Abstract
What and who is social work research for, and how does the way it is undertaken vary according to the answers that individual researchers give to these questions? Each of these queries will potentially provoke numerous responses. For some, social work research is unambiguously a means of furthering the aims of social work, which are emancipatory and enmeshed with an overriding commitment to social justice. For others, it is a means of generating objective knowledge which cumulatively enables the development of a more robust knowledge base for the profession, thus contributing to social work’s legitimacy. Also for others it represents just one approach to ‘meaning making’ among many, which generally tends to be mistakenly reified. Do and should any of these views hold a privileged position within the community of academic and practice-based social work researchers? And if so, what are the implications of this for those who hold to a different position? Again, there are multiple possible answers to what are undoubtedly contentious issues. The debate provoked by Michael Burawoy’s (2005) call for a ‘public sociology’ is of relevance here. This was in part prompted by a perceived mismatch between the priorities of researchers and those of both government and the wider population, which threatened the status of sociology as a discipline and relatedly, the extent to which the work of researchers had – to use current jargon – ‘impact’ (Brewer, 2013). It sparked much internal debate about the purposes of sociological research, which has filtered through to related disciplines – ‘publicitis’ as one critic refers to it (Wacquant, 2011). In criminal justice, the noted criminologists Ian Loader and Richard Sparks have argued cogently for a conception of the engaged researcher as ‘democratic under labourer’ based on (2011). They acknowledge the contribution made by researchers working within critical and interpretive traditions, but suggest that both approaches have inbuilt tendencies to bias and subjectivity which hinder disciplinary knowledge development. Although intended as a call for rapprochement on the basis of holistic complementarities, this is nevertheless a controversial position, given the strongly held convictions of practitioners and researchers working within distinct epistemological frameworks.
Such debates are, of course, germane within social work too. However, the concerns of practice-based disciplines are arguably distinct from those of less applied, more theoretical subjects, given the need for knowledge to meet the criteria of ‘the practice paradigm’. Gould (2006) has developed a helpful typology specifying the varying aims of social work researchers which regards these as complementary rather than competing, and necessarily so. Shaw (2010), meanwhile suggests that the complex intersections and tensions between the component parts of the ‘tripod’ of evidence, understanding and justice to some extent mark the less than clear-cut distinctiveness of social work research. However, such typologies, despite their merits, offer little guidance regarding the ‘how’ of research, as opposed to the ‘why’. In particular, they leave unclear how qualitative studies that might contribute to these agendas might actually be undertaken. This is an issue that the two texts reviewed in this issue grapple with. Both represent published guidance from authoritative sources, in the US and UK, respectively, and so potentially function as ‘position papers’ outlining a quasi-official view on if and how qualitative studies might be undertaken if they are to effectively contribute to current research agendas. Dawn Dowding’s review highlights some of the difficulties that such manuals can lead to, as well as the broader issues entailed in attempting to simultaneously offer specific guidance but also general parameters to researchers with their own distinct but varied agendas. Although there may be some benefit in a ‘public social work’, the notion that this might be any less controversial in practice-based disciplines than their academic brethren seems, for good reasons, far-fetched.