Social Work Researchers: From Scientific Technicians to Changemakers

Abstract

Previous articleNext article FreeSocial Work Researchers: From Scientific Technicians to ChangemakersJorge Delva and Laura S. AbramsJorge DelvaBoston University Search for more articles by this author and Laura S. AbramsUniversity of California, Los Angeles Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreThis invited article is based on the 2022 Aaron Rosen Lecture—"Healing Humanity: Leading through Innovation and our Courage to Change"—presented by Jorge Delva at the Society for Social Work and Research 26th Annual Conference held January 12–16, 2022, in Washington, DC. The annual Aaron Rosen Lecture features distinguished scholars who have accumulated a body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, the research base for practice, or effective use of research in practice. Delva invited colleague Laura Abrams to collaborate on this paper, which captures the essence of his Rosen Lecture, because the two scholars have extensively discussed the impact of social movements, social work roles within these movements, and research and educational trends.The United States is facing monumental social challenges, including ongoing racial violence, COVID-19, attempts by the previous U.S. president and others to thwart our very democracy, assaults on reproductive rights, voter suppression, and transphobic and homophobic laws. Furthermore, we all are impacted by the existing geopolitical conflicts occurring globally. In the midst of these difficult moments, we pause to acknowledge the incredible research efforts and accomplishments of our social work colleagues and the wider profession as we continue to tackle society's most pressing problems through research, policy, and practice. At the same time, we want to highlight the critical importance of conducting high-impact research—that is, research that impacts people's lives now and not decades from now. Research that uses antiracist and antioppressive lenses is absolutely necessary to improve the lives of everyone, particularly those who are most vulnerable and marginalized. In support of these points, we highlight research that has been informed by social movements and/or that contributes to social movements, as these examples lead to long-lasting, transformative changes in ways that traditional social work research tends not to due to its focus on repetitive and incremental knowledge development. In this paper, we call on all social work educators, researchers, and practitioners to contribute to, and learn from, social movements in their work.While we were discussing and writing this paper in summer 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court announced three major decisions. One loosened gun restrictions, even in the wake of numerous lethal and horrific mass shootings. A second decision considerably reduced the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to restrict emissions from power plants, and a third overturned the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade. These devastating decisions are sure to have grave future consequences. We will circle back later to how these events relate to high-impact social work research and social movements, but for now, we share these examples to illustrate the point that research without social movements is nontransformative, and social movements without research result in societies that lean toward harmful authoritarian, extremist social, economic, and political structures.In the sections that follow, we celebrate our profession's accomplishments, highlight the importance of high-impact research, and conclude with encouragement to conduct research that is informed by antiracist and antioppressive frameworks.Celebrating Social Work ResearchIn this section, we do not highlight the research of individuals because to do so would leave too many out. Instead, we highlight topical areas where social work researchers are either leading and collaborating on research that is highly important and impactful. In the United States, social work researchers are funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and many other national governmental organizations, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Health Resources and Services Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Department of Defense, Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services. Social work researchers are also funded by a large number of state governmental entities along with individual and private philanthropic foundations. With the support of these funding sources, social work researchers are conducting randomized trials to test the efficacy of new or improved interventions, observational studies, historical and archival research, primary data collection or secondary data analysis, policy analysis, and community-engaged participatory research, among many others, all of which span research methods that cut across methodologies (qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods, and more).Growth in the breadth and depth of social work research over the last two decades is reflected in the theoretical and methodological sophistication and productivity of today's social work doctoral students. Their presentations at research conferences, success in securing funding, and job-talk presentations are hallmarks of a sophisticated cadre of scholars conducting high-impact research—a testament to social work's focus on research. The incredible scholarship underway by social workers can also be found among faculty in our schools and departments of social work, and in social work practice programs such as Veterans Affairs centers, among others. Alongside society's and social work's increased attention to racism and anti-Blackness over the past several years, accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States has seen an increase in calls for proposals, papers, and presentations that are both deeply scientific and attentive to social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. These calls present new opportunities for social work researchers, as this type of research speaks to our core values, knowledge, and skills that are sorely needed to address today's pressing social problems.High-Impact ResearchBy high-impact research, we mean research findings that can be applied in a timely manner to influence the development and implementation of programs, policies, or movements that will help improve the lives of populations who are most impacted by marginalization and oppression. High-impact research makes a difference in people's lives and is not determined solely by whether that work is frequently cited or published in a journal that is highly ranked by the Web of Science or other algorithms that calculate citations. Although we recognize that publishing in a journal with a high impact factor can bring greater attention to one's research, we are also attentive to the social construction of knowledge and historical artifacts resulting in the well-grounded criticisms of high-impact journals (Paulus et al., 2018; Saper, 1999; Seglen, 1997). We see the impact of social work research in the ways that social workers include community and client voices and work directly with community members and government officials at city, county, state, and federal levels to inform program development and formulate policies that strive toward justice. In their edited book about social work researchers from different countries attempting to influence policy, Gal and Weiss-Gal (2017) pointed to what they called the "long-running debate in academia on the role of intellectuals in addressing the social concerns of the societies which they are a part" (p. 1). They also pointed out the assumption that given social work's commitment to social justice and social change, "social work academics would be policy actors at the forefront of involvement in the social policy process" (p. 1). Unfortunately, we know this is not the case and therefore suggest that given the state of the world, there should no longer be a debate. Rather, social workers should all be actors in social policy and changemaking processes.Paradigms of KnowledgeAll types of knowledge building undergo paradigm shifts, and it is often difficult to understand these shifts while they are unfolding. We are both of the generation of scholars (with our PhDs earned around the turn of the 21st century) who lived through social work's major push toward highly empirical quantitative evidence and randomized trials—a movement that in many ways mirrored psychological and health sciences research approaches. As leaders and administrators in 2022, we now see that the next generation of scholars is calling for more critical, abolitionist, and community-rooted scholarship. With these disparate voices, it is critical that we heed the lessons of the past as we consider the future we wish to create for social work, and social work research in particular.In the 1990s and early 2000s, several major initiatives shaped the course of social work's scholarly enterprise. We were both pursuing our doctoral degrees at major research institutions during the formation of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR), an organization that most certainly elevated social work's scholarship but also splintered research conferences from practice and teaching societies (i.e., Council on Social Work Education, National Association of Social Workers)—perhaps to the detriment of maintaining ties between research and practice. We also witnessed formation of the St. Louis Group, the Grand Challenges for Social Work, and other more "elite" leadership groups sponsored by the most well-funded universities. These efforts were instrumental in building social work's external credibility as a profession that can contribute to knowledge generation, and for that, we are thankful. In fact, as the recent antivaccination movement has revealed, just because people have thoughts and opinions about a subject does not mean these thoughts align with evidence. These types of movements show that scientifically rigorous knowledge-development approaches are needed to inform effective social programs and policies.Nevertheless, no substantial paradigm shift occurs without unanticipated consequences. In this case, social work's empirical push seems to have resulted in a focus on quantity over impact; undue emphasis on publishing in journals, often in non-social-work journals that have high impact factors but are separated from our practice community; engagement in "traditional" modes of scholarship that do not necessarily challenge the status quo; and pursuit of NIH funding as an end in itself. We remember when NIH finally received a "platform" at SSWR for a preconference institute, causing us as newly minted professors to wonder if we had to obtain an NIH grant to be a successful academic, even if our research wasn't about health per se. We know we are not alone with the experience early in our careers of senior faculty attempting to steer us away from our passions to try to have our research conform to an NIH agenda. For many, this made their own work—particularly community-rooted or social movement work—seem marginalized.Without doubt, federal grants have bolstered the state of social science and have funded many important studies. Many of our colleagues have produced robust knowledge that has changed their respective fields, including important community-centered studies in housing, substance use and mental health disorders, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, and Indigenous wellness, among many others. Yet, the narrow focus on NIH as an arbiter of a successful scholar has also reinforced the top-down, parachuting type of research whereby researchers drop into a community, conduct their research, and depart with little to no involvement by and impact on the community "studied." In other words, no tangible or noticeable improvement in people's lives results from the research. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this practice, but we have seen more of the former work than the latter.Social work researchers who publish frequently in high-impact journals and earn NIH grants should be celebrated, and with good reason: These accomplishments reflect the recognition by peer scientists of high-quality research with state-of-the art conceptual and methodological innovations aimed at understanding or solving societal problems. We are concerned, however, with the unanticipated consequence that these have become goals to aspire to throughout social work academia, often at the expense of real partnership, working toward real transformative change, dismantling socially and racially unjust practices, and making a more immediate impact on the problems we seek to solve. We fear that when research is not critical of the status quo, it will reproduce and maintain social inequalities, which is perhaps one of the more negative unanticipated consequences of this empirical trend. As pioneer race researcher and Dean Emeritus Larry Davis (2016) warned us before he passed:Our research should identify greater implications for impacting social policy. That is, we must begin to think about influencing racial justice via social policy. We have often failed to recognize that influencing social policy is central to our mission as social work researchers. With this in mind, we must design and plan our studies with the goal of more adequately influencing racial aspects of social policy.(p. 401)We recognize that the push toward evidence without a solid anchor to community needs or voices has been to a large extent responsive to pressures from leaders in academia and in the macro environment of academic research funding, prestige, and power. The academic institutions that employ us have intensified the pressure on all academics, and certainly on our profession, to pursue large external funding and publish in highly ranked academic journals. Cassil's (2021) report summarized the ways these pressures preserve heterosexism and a hostile, toxic, and racist environment because the "current academic recruitment, promotion, and tenure practices reward adeptness at capturing federal funding and burnishing university reputations in various ranking schemes rather than conducting research that improves people's lives" (p. 6). The fact that deans and directors (admittedly including ourselves) continue to participate in the U.S. News & World Report rankings process, despite overwhelming agreement that these rankings are at best incredibly biased and at worst entirely invalid, show the pressure we are under to climb in these rankings. The pressures come from our respective provosts and presidents, who in turn are responding to pressures from alumni and prospective students and their families, all of which is strongly influenced by the profit-seeking corporation that U.S. News & World Report is.With this complexity in mind, we return now to how we might reconcile varying trends in knowledge production. We posit that our conversations should be intergenerational, honest, and inclusive. They should not fall into dichotomous either/or choices but should expand to include the range of voices that make an impact. Methodological pluralism and less elitism can open the way for amazing voices to emerge, including those emerging scholars with lived experience, BIPOC scholars, LGBTQ+ scholars, scholars with disabilities, and/or scholars from colleges and universities without an elite institutional backing. We should honestly and thoughtfully consider the impact of our work on improving people's lives: Has anyone benefitted from our work? If so, how? Similarly, when advocating for a particular paradigm or approach, we should all be able to answer the critical questions of whether and when our work will help ameliorate the conditions that give rise to human suffering.Emerging scholars, including social work doctoral students, are demanding more comprehensive change in our profession and our academic enterprise (e.g., Mendez et al., 2021). As is the case with all paradigm shifts in knowledge production and dissemination, a period of resistance can prevent advancement. Yet, if we can engage in these conversations—we recognize that this is a big "if"!—perhaps our response to the current state of affairs can point us toward a collective vision for the future of social work research.In regard to holding difficult conversations, it has been our experience that too often when we discuss some aspect of our social work profession, we tend to be a hypercritical group, and in many cases, we belittle the work that we do as social work practitioners, scholars, teachers, or others. We posit that this sense of inferiority is at least partially rooted in sexism: As a primarily "feminine" helping profession, social workers often see themselves as "less than" and harken back to ideas that the work of social change and social casework is not in fact a "science" (or with the Flexner [2001] lens, not even a legitimate profession). This self-criticism has in part been fueled by the intensive focus on evidence-based practices that elevated our profession scientifically but also siphoned off or marginalized other important forms of knowledge, particularly eclipsing the voices of scholars and communities not at research-intensive universities, who were not funded by NIH, or who did not become recognized as part of the evidence-based cannon.Other critiques that come from within point out that our current research practices, merit, and other forms of valuing research function as a tool of white supremacy, patriarchy, anti-Blackness, and social control (Cassil, 2021). Growing critiques from this perspective are not necessarily new, as journals such as the Journal of Progressive Human Services and Affilia, among others, have provided an outlet for more critical scholarship for many years. As early as 1968, the National Association of Social the National Conference on Social to, among other points, the current which as a tool of for people as as the social workers These voices are within our historical social work and but are from the white and often power that have the status two scholars, both members of the Association of Social Work and Social that social work research is at a between on the the & 2022, Their is comprehensive but social work as without a future for a new one that is to be the end of their and recognized that social work research is more as both a science and an art and as a tool of both and however, we that the central of this within dichotomous either/or that our We that it is important for our profession to to areas that the for ongoing and we also recognize that it is important to celebrate and highlight social work's many We also are not that social work research is at a new or that we to make a Rather, we think it is an for social work research to continue its while a critical that is needed to and the impact social work research. is through a critical as that social work can conduct more research and research that to We expand on these in the to and Research in Social for the health the of scientific knowledge to or the knowledge through research into practice, than within the and science of which implementation science be a of implementation science has The NIH a of various implementation science We the to improving health that is occurring to implementation which scientific approaches with an emphasis on community and our of high-impact research in this paper implementation goal of health research to practice, as we recognize that science with the of problems such as heterosexism and all types of social rather than addressing it is these that the next generation of scholars us to our on the of evidence have social work researchers along the of the scientific bu

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