Evaluation with One Eye Closed: The Empiricist Agenda in Social Work Research

Abstract

This paper was originally presented at a conference on ’the effectiveness of social work‘ at Swansea in 1981. It argues against a narrowly empiricist model of evaluation in social work, suggesting that while such a model may help to improve the technical efficacy of methods, it can tell us little about the desirability of the goals towards which our methods are directed, or the social functions which they serve. The final section points to some possible resources for rational discussion of areas which ’scientific‘ models of evaluation tend to neglect.

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