Competency 4: Practice-Informed Research & Research-Informed Practice
Social workers conduct research using ethical, culturally informed, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive approaches. Social workers understand how research informs practice and practice informs research. Social workers understand that there is inherent bias in research, thus they critically evaluate, synthesize, and critique current, empirically sound research. Social workers use these research skills to inform decision making in all arenas of social work and to develop appropriate research questions and hypotheses. Social workers possess skills to interpret data from quantitative and qualitative research methods and possess knowledge to assess reliability and validity in social work research. Social workers can articulate and share research findings in ways that make research findings accessible to clients and constituencies.
Project Evidence
Research Design
This is a research project that demonstrates the development of a research question, research design to answer our hypothesis. The research design includes the type of data that will be gathered, methods to gather the data needed, and methods used to measure correlation or lack thereof between independent and hypothesized dependent variables for our research
Impact Analysis & Key Insights
Reflection on Practice: Conducting research is interesting to me and was a great skill to be able to do for conducting a mock research project, creating a grant relevant to effective research, and has been important in writing papers and evaluating theoretical perspectives relevant to social work practice.
Future Implications: Moving forward, I hope to learn to synthesize research better than I am able to do now and to improve methods that I use to conduct research.