journal research on social work practice

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Research on Social Work Practice

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There is a growing movement in social work toward a more empirical selection of therapies and interventions because, to be effective, you have to know what works. As the community of practitioners, scholars and students interested in applying scientific methods of analysis to social work problems continues to grow, the need for a publication dedicated to social work practice outcomes has never been greater. Research on Social Work Practice is the first professional social work journal to focus on evaluation research and on validating methods of assessment in social work practice.

Vital Information Research on Social Work Practice is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the assessment methods and outcomes of social work practice.  Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal or interpersonal importance.  Interventions include behavior analysis and therapy; psychotherapy or counseling with individuals; case management; education; supervision; practice involving couples, families, or small groups; advocacy; community practice; organizational management; and the evaluation of social policies.

The journal primarily serves as an outlet for the publication of:

• Original reports of evidence-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice.
• Original reports of empirical studies on the development and validation of social work assessment methods.
• Original evidence-based reviews of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice.  The two types of review articles considered for publication are: 1) reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention; and 2) reviews of evidence-based interventions applicable to a particular psychosocial problem.

Comprehensive Coverage Each issue of Research on Social Work Practice brings you the latest scholarship to help bridge the gap between research and practice. Regular features include: Outcome Studies New Methods of Assessment Scholarly Reviews Invited Essays Book Reviews

In-Depth Special Issues Research on Social Work Practice frequently supplements its broad coverage with in-depth studies of topics of particular concern through Special Issues or Special Sections. Previous examples include:

• Research on Social Work Practice in Chinese Communities (Vol.12, n.4)
• Honoring Walter W. Hudson (Vol.12, n.1)
• Flexner Revisited (Vol.11, n.2)
• Research on Social Work Practice in Ireland (Vol.10, n.6)
• Technology and Social Work (Vol.10, n.4)
• Australian Social Work Research (Vol.10, n.2)

By connecting practice and research in an artful and readable fashion, RSWP has provided a synergy for the helping professions — the vital recognition that without research, practice is blind; and without practice, research is mute. — Martin Bloom Professor, School of Social Work, University of Connecticut In the relatively few years since its inception, Research on Social Work Practice has become one of the most highly respected and frequently cited journals in our field. Researchers, practitioners, and students have all found its contents to be invaluable in their work. — Dianne Harrison Montgomery Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, Florida State University   The unique manner in which the editors cover the broad spectrum of research on social work practice is destined to make the journal become a classic in the field. This is a must reading for all engaged in any level of practice research. — Moses Newsome, Jr. Dean, School of Social Work, Norfolk State University Past-President, Council on Social Work Education This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

Research on Social Work Practice , sponsored by the Society for Social Work and Research, is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the methods and outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance, including behavior analysis or psychotherapy involving individuals; case management; practice involving couples, families, and small groups; community practice education; and the development, implementation, and evaluation of social policies.

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Guidelines for Authors

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) is a peer-reviewed disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance. Interventions include, but are not limited to, behavior analysis and therapy, psychotherapy or counseling with individuals, cognitive therapy, case management/care coordination, education, supervision, practice involving couples, families, or small groups, advocacy, community practice, organizational management, and the evaluation of social policies. At least one author of a submitted article must be a professional social worker, and/or the interventions evaluated must have been provided by professional social workers.

The journal will primarily serve as an outlet for the publication of:

1. Original reports of empirically-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice;

2. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice. The only two types of systematic reviews considered for publication are:

A. Systematic reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention or assessment method, or B. Systematic reviews of different psychosocial interventions applicable to clients with a particular psychosocial problem.

The journal welcomes empirical research appropriately derived from a variety of etiological and intervention theories, as well as studies which focus on evaluations not based upon formal theoretical frameworks. Studies using diverse methodologies, such as group or single-system research designs, qualitative approaches, mixed methods approaches, and interdisciplinary works are welcome to be submitted. Replication studies are welcome, as are well-designed studies with negative findings or reports of treatment failures. Authors are encouraged to submit only articles of the highest quality for editorial review and possible publication. The submission of seriously flawed or marginal studies is discouraged. Reports of inferential statistics involving significant differences must be accompanied by suitable measures of effect sizes and their appropriate confidence intervals, and include a discussion of the practical impact indicated by these effects.

Articles reporting original research involving data collection from human beings must include a statement indicating the source of Institutional Review Board Approval (blinded in the original submission) or a clear statement addressing why IRB review was not necessary.

Manuscripts which do not fit into one of the above two categories should not be submitted, and if received will be promptly returned to the author un-reviewed. Occasionally other types of submissions are published in the journal (e.g., guest editorials, conference proceedings, research center descriptions), but these are usually invited and accepted at the discretion of the Editor.

Inappropriate Submissions: The journal does not usually publish narrative case studies, surveys, program descriptions, theoretical, philosophical or conceptual works, correlational investigations, historical reviews, retrospective predictor studies, purely methodological articles, descriptive studies, or needs assessments. The journal no longer accepts for review psychometric studies, reports of the development and validation testing of measurement methods useful for research or practice . Authors are urged to submit such studies to the many other social work journals which do not have the intervention-research focus of Research on Social Work Practice . The journal publishes occasional special issues devoted to a particular topic and readers with an interest in proposing a topic for such a special issue and to serve as a Guest Editor for that issue are welcome to contact the Editor.

Authors are encouraged to make pre-publication use of a data-depository ( http://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories#general ) to ensure post-publication access to their data and to indicate this in the submitted manuscript. At a minimum, reports of original data-based research should include a statement from the authors indicating where qualified researchers may obtain a copy of the data and data-coding manual (this is usually the corresponding author). This stipulation is to encourage transparency in the reporting process and to promote re-analysis and replication efforts by independent scholars.

Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to have their submission carefully edited by English language experts prior to submission. Sage Publications Inc. offers such a service, which can be located at: http://languageservices.sagepub.com/en/

Authors not familiar with current APA style are encouraged to review the free online style guides provided by the American Psychological Association, which can be located at:

http://www.apastyle.org/index.aspx?_ga=1.161514751.2121075784.1468782120 . Submissions out of compliance with APA style will be returned un-reviewed.

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . 

ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID iDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID iD then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP)  may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.

If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

Visit the Sage Journals and Preprints page for more details about preprints.

Guidelines for Preparing Quantitative Outcome Studies

The journal requires that accepted quantitative manuscripts be formatted in compliance with the Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) found in the sixth edition of the APA Publication Manual . Note that apart from general guidelines, there are separate additional guidelines for reporting quasi-experimental and experimental studies, as well as for meta-analyses. There are also guidelines for reporting a study participant flow chart, which should be included in nomothetic outcome studies. Mixed methods papers including quantitative analyses should have these elements of the article compliant with these guidelines. Causal inferences, if any, should be made conservatively and not go beyond the limits imposed by the presented methods and data.

Single-case research studies which build upon traditional case narrative reports by adding the systematic and empirical measurement of clinically relevant variables (e.g., client’s problems or strengths) before, during and after treatment begins, are welcome submissions. Outcome measures must have acceptable levels of reliability and validity, the intervention must be well-described, and any causal inferences drawn must not go beyond those legitimately derived from the data. Data must be presented in the form of line graphs. The guidelines by Kratochwill et al. (2010) are recommended in this regard.

Articles reporting the results of a quasi-experimental outcome study must follow the standards found in the Transparent Reporting of Evaluation Studies using Nonrandomized Designs (TREND) checklist. Include a completed TREND Checklist as an appendix to your paper. See http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/ .

Articles reporting a randomized controlled trial must follow the Consolidated Reporting Standards for Randomized Trials (CONSORT), and include a completed CONSORT Checklist. See http://www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/ . The authors of outcome studies evaluating non-pharmacological interventions (e.g., psychosocial treatments) are urged to familiarize themselves with relevant guidelines useful for reporting such studies. Grant et al. (2013) is a recommended resource for authors to consult, as is Boutron, Ravaud and Moher (2012).

Authors submitting a randomized clinical trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental outcome study for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered their study protocol in a suitable clinical trials registry , such as clinicaltrials.gov. The article by Harrison and Mayo-Wilson (2014) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering their protocol. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any clinical trials registry they have submitted their protocol to.

Guidelines for Preparing Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

RSWP welcomes well-crafted empirically-based reviews of the treatment literature. Such manuscripts should present either the evidence regarding a particular psychosocial intervention , various interventions for a particular psychosocial problem or a critical review of treatment studies focused on a particular disorder, problem or condition. Review articles should have a clear social work focus, and cite the relevant social work literature, if any exists, in addition to pertinent findings from the broader behavioral and social sciences. Manuscripts of this type should provide the reader with clear and compelling applications to practice, not untested implications.

Articles claiming to be a Systematic Review should adhere to the guidelines for preparing systematic reviews developed by the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins & Green, 2009) or the Campbell Collaboration (2014). In addition, the authors of systematic reviews and meta-analyses must follow the guidelines found in the PRISMA Statement ( Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses ), found at: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ .

If the article does not follow these standards, the paper should be titled as A Narrative Review, or simply A Review , and the specific term Systematic Review should be avoided.

Authors submitting a systematic review for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered the review protocol in a suitable registry, such as PROSPERO ( www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO ). The article by Stewart, Moher and Shekelle (2012) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering systematic review protocols. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any registry in which the protocol is published.

The EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency of Health Research) is a recommended resource for authors preparing studies for submission to RSWP which deal with the general topic of health care. See http://www.equator-network.org/ .

Completed copies of relevant TREND, CONSORT or PRISMA checklists should be included as a separate supplemental file when submitting the manuscript online.

Guidelines for Preparing Qualitative Studies

RSWP welcomes well-written rigorous qualitative outcome studies. Studies of the processes of an intervention, absent credible evidence that the intervention actually produces positive effects, are not invited for submission. Authors are encouraged to judiciously take advantage of the journal’s lack of a page limitation and craft a manuscript that details the context and methods to provide transparency of the study. The qualitative methodology used must be consistent throughout the study. The sampling, data collection, and analysis should make sense considering the chosen research question and the method. Authors should describe strategies employed to ensure the trustworthiness and credibility of the study, and provide a replicable audit trail. Qualitative data analysis software may be appropriately used in the analysis, but is not required. For suggestions on creating well-written qualitative article consult Fawcett et al. (2014), Staller and Krumer-Nevo (2013) and Pratt (2009).

How to submit a manuscript: The journal requires authors to use the MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL web-based portal to submit their manuscripts. The submission portal is available via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rswp

Use of the Journal Article Reporting Standards: All submissions are required to be prepared using the formatting standards found in the 6th Edition (2010) of the APA Publication Manual. Authors of data-based papers are specifically asked to adhere to the relevant Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS). The Editor is available to consult with you about any questions you may have regarding complying with these standards. They have been adopted to help promote consistency in research reporting, to try and further elevate the standards of work appearing in Research on Social Work Practice , and to ultimately improve the credibility of research findings available to the profession and the public. The abstracts of research articles must include the following headings: Purpose:, Methods:, Results:, Conclusions:. Manuscripts not adhering to current APA style conventions will be returned to the authors un-reviewed and with a request to revise their paper and to resubmit it. A very common error is for authors to inappropriately include the issue number following the volume number, in citations to articles appearing in journals paginated by year. See the APA manual if you are not clear when issue numbers should and should not be included. Some bibliographic software programs automatically include issue numbers, and these should be manually deleted, if necessary.

All manuscripts should include an abstract on a separate page that contains no more than 150 words, and also a separate title page (designated as Title Page) which includes: 1) title of the article; 2) corresponding author's full name, current position, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers; 3) co-author(s)' full name(s) and affiliation(s); 4) up to five key words as they should appear if they were to be published. Manuscripts will not be considered for submission if they do not include these elements. Tables and/or Figures are to be included when necessary to depict the results. There is no specific limit on the total number of pages, tables or figures.

Authors submitting manuscripts are protected by common law against the unauthorized use of their unpublished work. Specifically, an unpublished manuscript is considered to be a confidential or privileged paper. All reviewers will be asked to destroy or return the manuscript after their review is completed; in addition, reviewers will be asked not to circulate, quote, cite, or refer to the unpublished work in any way unless specific permission is granted by the author.

Artwork Submissions

High-resolution figures should be uploaded as separate electronic files, with callouts for each in the text. Figure legends should include full explanations of the figures and be typewritten double-spaced with numbers corresponding to those on the figure files themselves. All figures must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, and PDF Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for vector art (line art). Permission for use of the copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. All artwork must be camera ready.

Tables should be numbered consecutively corresponding to in-text citation. Each table should be prepared on a separate page at the end of the text document and preferably should be no larger than a single page. Include a brief descriptive title of the table and a footnote with explanation of any abbreviations. All tables must be specifically referred to in the text for placement and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Elements in tables should be separated by tabs, not cells or lines.

Conflict of Interest

Authors are required to disclose any commercial, financial, or other associations that could pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted article and these must be disclosed on the title page at the time of submission.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

Authors should list all funding sources (and ID numbers, as appropriate) related to the study and to the article preparation.

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be required to complete an electronic copyright transfer form. From SageTRACK website “Corresponding Author Center” choose the correct manuscript from “Manuscripts with Decisions” and from the ACTION box on the far right side, choose “Contributor Form.” After reading the form and completing the appropriate boxes, clicking the “I accept” box will confirm appropriate copyright transfer.

Authors are required to submit written permission from the original publisher to reprint copyright-protected material, including quoted material of 300 words or more from a single source (journal article or book).

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in this journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal must not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar content. All authors of a submitted manuscript must be made aware of and consent to the submission.

Publish Ahead of Print With OnlineFirst

OnlineFirst is a feature in which completed articles are published online prior to their inclusion in a print issue, offering authors the advantage of making their research accessible to the public in a more timely manner. Only online subscribers can view these PDFs, but abstracts are available to the public to view for free. Each OnlineFirst manuscript is citable by the publication date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), providing a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment. You can cite OnlineFirst articles as follows:

Author’s last name, first initials. Article title. Journal title. Pre-published month day, year; DOI: 10.1177/ 0123456789123456

Once your article has completed the production process and before it is published in a print issue, it will be posted online. You can access RSWP OnlineFirst articles on the Web at http://rswp.sagepub.com/pap.dtl . Once posted online, articles may not be retracted or edited. If your article is not completed prior to its publication date, it will not go on OnlineFirst but will be posted online with the issue in which it is published.

The journal uses a blind peer review system to evaluate manuscripts, and the expertise of the Editorial Board members is augmented by the extensive use of Guest Reviewers. Most authors receive an initial editorial decision within two months of submission, accompanied by constructive peer commentary. Most articles eventually accepted for publication undergo extensive author-completed revisions, based on peer-review commentary, prior to acceptance. The journal has a modest backlog of accepted manuscripts, thus authors of accepted manuscripts can expect a lag of about 12 months or less, from final acceptance to print publication. However, the journal has a publish-ahead-of-print service in that the final, corrected and accepted version of their paper will be published electronically on the journal’s website, with a ‘doi’. This will permit its ready access to the community of scholars, students, and practitioners months ahead of print publication. These articles will be both citable and downloadable. Articles are published in the general order of their acceptance.

Boutron, I., Ravaud, P. & Moher, D. (2012). Randomized clinical trials of nonpharmacological treatments. New York: CRC Press.

Campbell Collaboration. (2014). Campbell Collaboration systematic review: Policies and guidelines. The Campbell Collaboration. Available from www.campbellcollaboration.org

Fawcett, S. E., Waller, M. A., Miller, J. W., Schwieterman, M. A., Hazen, B. T., & Overstreet, R. E. (2014). A trail guide to publishing success: Tips on writing influential conceptual, qualitative, and survey sesearch. Journal of Business Logistics , 35 (1), 1-16.

Grant, S., Montgomery, P., Hopewell, S., Macdonald, G., Hoher, D. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2013). Developing a reporting guideline for social and psychological intervention trials. Research on Social Work Practice, 23, 595-602.

Harrison, B. A. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2014). Trial registration: Understanding and preventing

bias in social work research. Research on Social Work Practice, 24, 372-376.

Kratochwill, T. R., Hitchcock, J., Horner, R. H., Levin, J. R., Odom, S. L., Rindskopf, D. M. &

Shadish, W. R. (2010). Single-case designs technical documentation . Retrieved from What Works Clearinghouse website: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Document/229

Pratt, M. G. (2009). From the editors: For the lack of a boilerplate: Tips on writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal , 52 , 856-862.

Staller, K. M., & Krumer-Nevo, M. (2013). Successful qualitative articles: A tentative list of cautionary advice. Qualitative Social Work , 12 , 247-253.

Stewart, L., Moher, D. & Shekelle, P. (2012). Why prospective registration of systematic reviews makes sense. Systematic Reviews, 1 :7. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-7

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Article Contents

Introduction, what is practice research and why (and for whom) does it matter, practice research as an organisationally rooted participatory research methodology, practice research frameworks, how can service users benefit from participating in practice research, integrating practice research processes into social service organisational analysis, applications of practice research for social service organisations, methodological and ethical considerations for practice research-based organisational analysis, implications and an agenda for social work researchers, acknowledgements.

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Practice research methods in social work: Processes, applications and implications for social service organisations

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Bowen McBeath, Michael J Austin, Sarah Carnochan, Emmeline Chuang, Practice research methods in social work: Processes, applications and implications for social service organisations, The British Journal of Social Work , Volume 52, Issue 6, September 2022, Pages 3328–3346, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcab246

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Although social work research is commonly rooted within social service settings, it can be difficult for social work researchers and practitioners to develop and sustain participatory studies that specifically promote knowledge sharing and service improvement involving organisational practice. One participatory approach is practice research (PR), which involves social work researchers and practitioners collaborating to define, understand and try to improve the delivery of health and social care services and organisational structures and processes. The two goals of this commentary are to introduce essential methods and approaches to PR and to identify points of connection involving PR and social service organisational studies. Our specific focus on PR in statutory, voluntary and private social service organisations reflects efforts to connect practice, theory and qualitative and quantitative research methods to develop and share organisationally-situated knowledge.

This paper offers an overview of practice research (PR) that focuses on the delivery of social work services in social service organisations. PR is a participatory method used by researchers to address the needs of vulnerable populations, notably poor communities of colour, who receive health and social care services in formal organisational settings. PR is ‘a knowledge development process that focuses primarily on the roles of the service provider, service user, and the service researcher who all participate in defining the research questions and interpreting the findings’ ( Fisher et al. , 2016 ). PR therefore seeks to improve social work and other social services and promote the well-being of service users; and functions as a collaborative process that minimises power differentials between participants ( Austin, 2020 ).

The macro-organisational context of PR studies includes concerns of managerialism amidst neoliberalism, involving increased professionalisation, the use of evidence-based practices and the structuring of service programmes around carefully defined performance measures in response to administrative and policy requirements ( Hasenfeld and Garrow, 2012 ; Harlow et al. , 2013 ; Yan et al. , 2017 ). The meso-organisational context of PR studies involves the development and sustainment of organisational spaces for reflection and sharing that support practitioner engagement in evidence-informed practice ( Carnochan et al. , 2017 ; Brandt et al. , 2020 ). The immediate context for PR is the bureaucratic encounters that involve staff and service users as well as practitioner use of research to promote organisational learning ( Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ). With its specific focus on statutory, voluntary and private social service organisations, PR aims to strengthen the collaborative capacity of practitioners and researchers to support service improvement and responsiveness to the perspectives of service users (capturing the expertise of experience).

In order to describe PR within organisations providing health and social care services, our paper is divided into four sections. First, we provide a brief introduction to PR to characterise its core elements. We also provide a brief review of the major approaches to PR, distinguishing between PR frameworks at different levels of practice and in different geographic contexts. We then identify how service users can benefit from PR. Secondly, we identify how PR processes can be integrated within social service organisational analysis, focusing in particular on how practice researchers and their agency partners (notably front line staff and managers) collaboratively seek to improve social service delivery, support organisational learning and promote interorganisational knowledge sharing. We also summarise PR processes that are based on the core concepts embedded in the science of the concrete (SOC) ( Flyvbjerg, 2001 ). Thirdly, we illustrate the applications of PR for local authorities/counties and voluntary social service organisations with the use of three brief examples featuring methodological and ethical considerations for researchers using PR approaches. Finally, we conclude by identifying implications for social work organisational researchers participating in PR studies and proposing a future research agenda.

At its core, PR is a negotiated process involving multiple stakeholders ( Uggerhøj, 2011 ). These stakeholders include statutory, voluntary and private social service organisations; managers, staff and service users within the organisation; researchers; and policymakers and community leaders. They all function within the context of intergroup communications, negotiation and shared learning needed to address the gap between research and practice and support learning across role-based social, cultural and organisational distances ( Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ).

In order to address this gap, PR involves elements of both practice and research. The elements of practice include: (1) engaging and including diverse types of stakeholders; (2) an effort to rebalance power relationships across organisational contexts, by validating the experiences and expertise of participants at different levels of the organisation; (3) open and frequent conversations to promote dialogue and sustain norms of trust and reciprocity; and (4) an appreciation for the critical role of organisational supports (notably managers) for exploring service innovation ( Uggerhøj, 2011 ).

Essential research elements of PR include the use of quantitative and qualitative data, as well as the reliance on evidence collected within the agency setting. The use of different types of evidence can generate two major research tensions; namely, balancing the breadth (as seen in large organisational surveys and administrative service databases) and depth (e.g. analysis of client case records, in-depth interviews) of research while navigating the tension between research rigour and practice wisdom displayed by practitioners and service users ( Julkunen, 2011 ).

These practice and research elements are integrated into PR studies that evolve in response to ongoing and changing agency needs and priorities. Facilitated group dialogue is used to collaboratively identify practice concerns, conduct research in response to the concerns, and share findings with a focus on assessing current social work practices and identifying opportunities for improvement ( Austin, 2020 ). PR involves power sharing and role shifting through reciprocal learning, as traditionally less-engaged stakeholders explore new roles (e.g. from service user to PR partner); and as managers and researchers reframe their traditional roles (e.g. exploring the emergence of practice-informed management research and research-informed management practice) ( Fisher et al. , 2016 ).

As one of several participatory social science research methods, PR reflects the emphasis of researchers on practice-in-context. In particular, PR shares a number of characteristics with participatory action research (PAR) and empowerment evaluation. In each method, collaboration with service users and other stakeholder groups is central to identifying basic research questions that relate to practices, programmes and/or policies as expressions of larger institutional forces. Furthermore, these approaches draw on diverse sources of literature, including practice and policy reports as well as academic research studies, to inform research questions. Lastly, collaborative collection and analysis of qualitative and/or quantitative data is carried out by research and practice partners across the three research traditions ( Healy, 2001 ; Fetterman et al. , 2017 ).

However, while PR shares many similarities with PAR and programme evaluation principles, it also differs in several important ways related to goals, data sources, data interpretation and the nature of knowledge development and dissemination (see Table 1 ). For example, a main goal of programme evaluation includes the central role of specifying programme objectives to inform funder or organisational decision making in a narrowly defined area (e.g. continue, modify or eliminate a programme). In contrast, PR goals may be much broader, and intended to inform participants’ conceptual thinking about current practice or service delivery and create dialogical opportunities without the same emphasis on direct implications for organisational decision making. Differences also appear in the area of research dissemination. Specifically, programme evaluation results are often used to support organisational planning in response to formal funding and policy requirements, and PAR is often used to support socio-political action or community change. In comparison, PR focuses more on service and practice improvement as well as the relationship between theory and practice, with the goal of encouraging more research-minded practitioners and more practice-minded researchers ( Saurama and Julkunen, 2012 ).

Comparing PR with other research frameworks a

Adapted from Austin and Carnochan (2020 , p. 199).

Another critical factor that distinguishes PR from other participatory research methods is the connection between social work practice and social service managers. Compared to action research and empowerment evaluation methodologies, PR is more explicitly organisational in understanding how managers, front line staff and service users make sense of their diverse roles and often competing statuses. PR is also more attentive to the collaborative interrelationships of service users, front line agency staff and managers in their interorganisational and institutional context. Finally, PR demonstrates an awareness of how questions of service delivery reflect the professionalisation of social work and social services vis-à-vis questions of organisational learning ( Fisher et al. , 2016 ).

Finally, another key difference between PR and its related methodologies can be found in the relationship of organisationally situated theories vis-à-vis practice. For practice researchers, considerations of theory-informed practice and practice-informed theory are important ( Fisher, 2011 ). The exploration and development of diverse theories (e.g. cultural–historical activity theory; Foot, 2014 ) helps practice researchers and participants identify shared practice challenges and explore possible solutions. For example, practice researchers can share lessons learned and practice implications of different theories of group-based learning and relational work, so that managers, workers and service users can determine how each theory enhances shared understanding of service problems and possible solutions ( Austin, 2020 ; Muurinen and Kaarianen, 2021 ).

In sum, PR is explicitly rooted within social service organisations, with a basic goal of collaborating to improve the delivery of health and social care services and organisational capacity within and between organisations ( Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ). Practice researchers pay close attention to the delivery of front line services as well as multilevel practice issues relating to managers, staff and service users.

The evolution of PR has reflected theoretical and practical developments. Practice researchers have used person-in-organisation theories of practice in an effort to explain the ‘everyday actions’ ( Feldman and Orlikowski, 2011 , p. 1241) and ‘concrete activities’ ( Barley and Kunda, 2001 , p. 76) that capture the relationship between agency-based service providers and service users. Researchers have also proposed ways of enhancing the practical relevance of research that involves social work researchers and practitioners promoting shared learning, with a goal of resolving fundamental service delivery dilemmas ( Austin et al. , 2014 ).

In response to these developments, the interrelated streams of PR have been explored in the form of collaboration and negotiation. For example, the foundational perspective of PR invites practitioners and service users to collaboratively identify opportunities to improve social work practices and organisational processes—particularly in response to administrative requirements and statutory mandates ( Fook and Gardner, 2007 ; Epstein, 2009 ). Similarly, there are opportunities to negotiate across differing approaches and perspectives that practitioners, service users and researchers bring to the knowledge production process ( Uggerhøj, 2011 ).

Based on the original formulation of PR, Julkunen (2011) developed a typology of PR studies, distinguishing between practitioner-oriented, generative, method-oriented and democratic models. In the practitioner-oriented model, the practitioner reflectively dialogues with others in order to address pressing practice issues. The generative model involves cycles of agency practice and research designed to connect practical knowledge to action by testing and evaluating potential practice innovations. The method-oriented model involves the service user, practitioner and researcher collaboratively developing practice-based knowledge as well as knowledge that can inform theory development and application. Finally, the democratic model focuses specifically on service users, practitioners, researchers and organisational and system leaders using PR to advocate for practice reforms, thereby connecting PR to policy change (also see Fisher, 2013 ).

Although scholarship on PR has historically reflected the perspectives of Nordic and US academic institutions and social welfare states, a globally diverse body of PR literature is emerging ( Chan and Sim, 2020 ). This literature demonstrates that different PR studies may reflect different: political, policy and organisational contexts of social service delivery; research methods; understandings of service user and practitioner involvement and collaboration and understandings of practice ( Sim et al. , 2018 ).

Empirical research on benefits accrued by service users when engaging in PR is currently limited. However, preliminary evidence suggests that benefits can be organised in terms of empowerment processes and measurable outcomes built on the service user premise of ‘nothing about us, without us’ ( Beresford and McLaughlin, 2020 ). Such processes invite PR participants to learn how to participate in non-hierarchical relationships that ensure diversity, equity and inclusion among service users and providers. This partnership relationship often involves joint problem-solving as well as developing a critical consciousness leading to an alliance through the articulation of shared and different needs and challenges ( Fook and Gardner, 2007 ). Engaging in this process can help service users gain a greater understanding of the contextualised nature of social problems they face.

Another key benefit of participating in PR involves expanding the capacities of service users to amplify their own voices and assume the position of representing the perspectives of peer-colleagues ( Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ). Service users may advocate internally (in response to management directives) and externally (in response to policy dicta and fiscal requirements). As they engage in advocacy efforts, service users can also increase their skills in identifying and accessing community resources (e.g. job training programmes that enhance employability). The process of engaging in humanising power-sharing relationships using dialogical communications between service users, staff and managers can thus involve a shared search for community resources and organisational funding needed to maintain service delivery at needed levels ( Ramon et al. , 2019 ).

The benefits of service user involvement do not necessarily lead to major organisational changes when the focus is on modifying or improving direct service or managerial practice. However, service user involvement can lead to both changes in practice as well as changes in organisational policies and structures ( Julkunen, 2011 ; Fisher, 2013 ). Through involvement in PR, service users can also participate in training and other learning-oriented events as co-equals with staff and other community stakeholders. These opportunities can involve service users playing critical roles of knowledge navigation and translation within social service organisational contexts, particularly where service user perspectives are needed to translate deep knowledge of programme and policy gaps to staff, managers and policymakers ( Muurinen and Kaarianen, 2021 ). Such PR efforts can help spur organisational change and the development of new approaches to system transformation. For service users, skills acquired through participation in PR can also be leveraged in future advocacy efforts or employment opportunities (e.g. serving as a consultant or staff member based on their expertise of experience with a particular social issue) ( Voronka and Grant, 2021 ).

In summary, some of the major benefits derived from service user involvement have been documented ( Natland and Celik, 2015 ) by noting the transition of service user from functioning with a sense of shame or trauma to one of pride and empowerment, in addition to learning how services can be evaluated and improved based on timely and strategic input from service users. A major limitation related to service user involvement could be that their involvement in which their service user experiences are contextualised or revisited could result in being retraumatised (e.g. reliving the experiences of being homeless, incarcerated, unemployed, physically disabled or mentally disabled), especially when acquiring the ‘big picture understanding’ of the pervasiveness of social problems in the larger society ( Müller and Pihl-Thingvad, 2020 ).

The next section identifies common approaches for practice researchers to collaborate with agency-based practitioners and managers in support of service user preferences.

PR processes reflect the evolving interests of social service organisational researchers and practitioners, as seen in their concerns with the formal delivery of contract-based public services, with specific focus on service access and equity considerations ( Jindra et al. , 2020 ). In a similar way, PR processes capture the concerns of managerialism as a response to neoliberalism and austerity, especially in European, Australian and Asian social welfare contexts ( Yan et al. , 2017 ; Alexander and Fernandez, 2021 ). Underlying these interests is an abiding focus on studies that validate and feature the perspectives of service users and service providers ( Hasenfeld and Garrow, 2012 ; Harlow et al. , 2013 ). These studies reflect decades of organisational research, as seen in Table 2 (for a review, see Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ). The overarching effort is to democratise knowledge sharing within social service organisational settings by identifying complementary ways for service users, practitioners, researchers and advocates to contribute to social service delivery.

Complementary types of practice research with social service organisations

For social service organisational scholars, PR processes support exploratory, explanatory and interventive research aims. In exploratory research, PR is used to identify the diverse organisational experiences of service users and service providers ( Austin, 2020 ). These exploratory studies are analogous to participatory needs assessments. In contrast, explanatory PR examines connections between service, programme or policy logics, and identifies broken or missing logics reflecting needed resources (notably, time, funding and training). For example, the identification of gaps between needs and services often reflects historically and/or currently unaddressed service needs (as seen by service users), programme needs (as perceived by front line staff) and organisational learning and policy implementation needs (as viewed by agency leaders) ( Hasenfeld and Garrow, 2012 ; Spitzmueller, 2018 ). Finally, PR can support intervention studies that involve the co-design, co-development, refinement and sharing of new practices within programmes (e.g. practical innovations that benefit service users and front line workers) ( Schalock et al. , 2014 ).

PR-based social service studies can be viewed from the perspectives of the SOC ( Flyvbjerg, 2001 ) that invites researchers to propose person-oriented research questions related to those individuals and groups most impacted by the issues at hand. The SOC also asks researchers to focus on small practices that support big events or processes by exploring everyday activities and their contexts that connect people and their organisational milieu. Finally, the SOC involves engaging multiple stakeholders while reducing power differentials. In PR, managers are viewed as essential linchpins who facilitate shared learning, by validating the multiple organisational identities of participants.

Although social service organisational research based on the SOC can take many forms, it ordinarily begins with question formulation around one or more practical problems or concerns. As elucidated by Austin and Carnochan (2020) , PR questions can take a variety of forms but generally involve three fundamental questions: How can we improve social services and, more broadly, enhance opportunities for health and social care? How can we amplify the voices of service users? and How can we sustain small innovations and promising practices in social work, particularly in different organisational and policy settings? Jointly defining PR questions involves validating the perspectives of each type of participant. Questions derived from the perspectives of service users and staff require considerable outreach in order to engage and amplify service user and practitioner voices (e.g. via service user- and staff-led meetings) ( Uggerhøj, 2011 ).

In comparison, organisational and policy-focused research questions are often formulated by senior management in regards to intra-organisational issues (e.g. cross-departmental coordination and collaboration) and inter-organisational issues (e.g. contracting and implementation challenges involving statutory, voluntary and private social service organisations) ( Fisher, 2013 ). Negotiating among the diverse types of research questions involves explaining why the questions are relevant for different groups, how each envisioned research study can support mutually beneficial goals, and what benefits and challenges might arise as a result.

Other key concepts of the SOC that support PR studies include collaboration and engagement with partners based on persistent communication, representation of diverse memberships, fostering inclusiveness, engaging in difficult conversations and consensus building. Other needed skills involve managing critical tensions, often relating to the responsibilities and expectations of different PR stakeholders. Additional tensions reflect the evolving demands of the organisation vis-à-vis its institutional environment. These tensions need to be addressed through shared dialogue in PR teams ( Julkunen, 2011 ).

As the PR team coalesces, it informs research design, data collection, data interpretation and research dissemination and utilisation in unique ways ( Austin, 2020 ). For example, the more traditional use of literature reviews is to ensure that the research questions and study design are informed by the latest peer-reviewed research studies, by reflecting their findings, key concepts, research methods and implications for future research. In comparison, building on existing knowledge in PR may also involve review of organisational documents, grey literature and the practice wisdom of practitioners and service users ( Austin and Carnochan, 2020 ).

In PR, literature reviews can also become ends in themselves. For example, PR-informed literature reviews can assist in reframing service processes (i.e. identifying how service users and practitioners understand the theories of action underlying service logic models); help staff to become more evidence-informed by reflecting on diverse practice literature and inform managerial decision-making processes. Similarly, in contrast to the traditional scholarly approach of disseminating research findings via peer-reviewed publications in academic journals, practice researchers also share findings directly with service providers and service users in the form of reports and presentations so that practice partners can identify novel applications and more effective approaches to practice.

This section provides three brief examples of PR-based organisational studies. The institutional context of the examples reflects a longstanding PR centre located in a US public research university, a regional consortium of county organisations that administer statutorily required social services and a regional consortium of non-profit organisations that provide voluntary social services. Regionalisation of PR efforts is not uncommon, particularly when organised through academic–practice partnerships involving research, education and training and service functions (often in metropolitan areas).

PR centres serve as network hubs for developing service, workforce and programme studies in response to institutional and local demands (e.g. new policy implementation requirements impacting service delivery). They share PR-based knowledge in order to advocate with local and regional policy and practice bodies, and work to promote mutual support and shared leadership among social service organisations. From the social service organisational perspective, consortium membership and affiliation with the PR centre can advance knowledge development and utilisation that might not otherwise be possible due to considerations of cost, research capacity or timing ( Schalock et al. , 2014 ). Whilst some PR centres are university-based ( Austin et al. , 1999 ), others are located in public settings (e.g. ministries of health and social services) ( Muurinen and Kaarianen, 2021 ). However, the general purpose of PR centres is similar to centres providing applied evaluation and technical assistance.

For over twenty-five years, the PR centre from which the following examples are drawn has supported collaborative, usable knowledge related to the management and improvement of social work services across the public and non-profit social service sectors ( Austin, 2018 ). Its studies have involved research at the front line, organisational and inter-organisational levels, ranging from qualitative agency-based case studies to large quantitative surveys that span public and non-profit organisations across the region. The studies have supported the collection and sharing of three types of research evidence as noted by Nutley et al. (2007) . The first type relates to conceptual evidence that is often drawn from exploratory PR studies that are designed to support future applications. The second type includes persuasive research evidence that often involves explanatory PR, and is used to advocate (within organisations) and externally (notably, with policymakers, funders and civic leaders). And the third type involves instrumental evidence that often relates to explanatory or interventive PR that is designed to support practice improvements (notably in response to identified service and training needs).

To illustrate some of these PR-informed studies of service delivery, we note the purpose of each study, and then summarise its use by study partners and the consortia of local authorities/counties and non-profit social service organisations. As each study evolved, practice researchers attended to the perspectives of organisational partners through persistent communications, relational work centred in interpersonal and small group meetings, managing tensions in response to ongoing and new challenges and celebrating successes.

The first example involved an exploration of the attributes and sustainability of pioneering non-profit social service organisations through in-depth case histories ( Austin, 2013 ) and focused on the organisational developmental needs of long-serving nonprofits. The study partners and regional consortium of non-profit social service organisations expressed significant interest in findings, leading to requests for self-assessment-based organisational and management support tools designed to promote front line service improvement.

The second example was a survey-based study of how front line and management practitioners across eleven county-based public social service organisations engaged in evidence-informed practice. The quantitative aspect of the study noted the importance of organisational roles and resources, and individual practitioner attitudes towards practice and innovation, in supporting different levels of evidence use ( McBeath et al. , 2015 ). The qualitative component of the study identified the specific cognitive, interactive, action and compliance dimensions of evidence-informed practice that are embedded within agency-based social and organisational practices and priorities ( Carnochan et al. , 2017 ). This explanatory study resulted in the provision of recommendations to the eleven county social service organisations, focused on identifying needed resources and opportunities for peer sharing and social support.

The third example involved a mixed methods study examining the collaborative nature of non-profit contracting amidst technical challenges that reflect the underlying complexity of social service delivery. Qualitative, comparative case study analysis was used to explore the multiple dimensions of relational contracting between non-profit and county social service organisations in three counties ( McBeath et al. , 2017 ). The quantitative component of the study entailed surveying non-profit and county social service organisations across different counties to assess the importance of cross-sector communications, trust-building and shared client accountability for collaborative contracting and social service outcome achievement ( Carnochan et al. , 2019 ; Chuang et al. , 2020 ). Study findings identified the need for public-non-profit social service contracting support structures and processes, including: regularly scheduled cross-sector meetings to identify emergent needs and promising service approaches; and cross-sector training and technical assistance to promote collaborative contracting and improved service outcomes.

Each example involved engagement with agency directors, division heads, senior managers and line staff. In each study, the research design and reporting process was iterative between levels, in support of facilitating communication on broadly relevant topics involving diverse staff groups. Overall, these and other studies from the specific PR centre have regularly featured critical information exchange sessions, involving agency staff presentations of local practices as well as research staff presentations of research syntheses, and in which the audience is cross-division and multi-level.

PR methods complement social service organisational research methodologies in at least two ways. First, PR offers an alternative to traditional organisational research that relies on quantitative analysis of elite surveys (notably agency directors). In comparison, PR studies incorporate diverse types of data (e.g. use of agency documents, interviews, focus groups, surveys) and the perspectives of individuals at different levels of analysis (including administrators and managers, front line staff and service users). These qualitative and quantitative data collection methods are intended to address common source bias and validity concerns. Mixed methods PR studies therefore need to anticipate concerns about the perceived trustworthiness, credibility, confirmability and dependability of the data (e.g. by pilot testing survey instruments and interview guides). (For a summative review concerning how to promote the rigour and relevance of PR studies, see Austin and Carnochan (2020 , pp. 183–189)).

Secondly, PR provides a balanced response to the understanding of researchers as either directing and managing the research process, or serving in subsidiary roles. In comparison, PR is a participatory process in which the research interests and perspectives of the researchers and practitioners are actively negotiated, and often reflect multiple objectives ( Fisher et al. , 2016 ). As noted previously, these include instrumental objectives (e.g. to use PR to enhance understanding of services and programmes, and/or to support organisational learning) along with process and interactional objectives (e.g. to support PR-based participation and collaboration). Among the most challenging aspects embedded in negotiations are values-based objectives that are designed to enhance equity and empowerment through PR projects.

Practice researchers therefore need to be prepared to take on co-facilitative roles on issues ranging from research question formulation to the interpretation, use and wider sharing of PR findings in organisations and broader contexts. These co-roles are essential for addressing group dynamics and cross-sector challenges, celebrating shared wins and fostering inclusiveness and active dialogue. Working through these critical tensions depends on power sharing—particularly for practice researchers and senior agency staff vis-à-vis front line staff and service users—and reflects key elements of intergroup dialogue amidst difference ( Austin, 2020 ).

Whilst there is a wide range of ethical issues associated with PR that draws heavily from social science research, some of the more prominent issues include service user and case record confidentiality, final report contributor equity, teamwork accountability derived from participatory decision making in search of consensus and adherence to data source protocols. The theme of confidentiality is wide ranging. It includes respecting the confidential nature of service user information collected as part of a PR project. It also involves the confidential discussions among research team members, who can include service users and staff. A final concern relates to the ethics of the timely reporting of the research to service users, other agency stakeholders and the larger community (e.g. elected officials, other organisations and researchers). In essence, PR involves the various ethical views of three different communities; namely, the research community, the service provider community and the service user community. The convergence of these three perspectives can be challenging for the various participants to both understand and accept.

These methodological and ethical considerations lead to four suggestions for social service organisational researchers when co-facilitating PR studies to enhance their ability to anticipate common PR challenges. First, PR presents communication-based coordination challenges (involving questions of trust, ethical dilemmas and available expertise), as practice and research partners may need to dialogue regularly amidst already-demanding work schedules. Secondly, partners may face changing and/or limited capacity for and engagement with PR, particularly as practice and research roles and priorities evolve. Thirdly, navigating PR projects requires attending to differing perspectives on the time frame to generate research results, viewed as fast by university standards and slow by agency standards. Fourthly, practice researchers need to demonstrate the capacity to convert research implications into practical recommendations for organisational change given the limited experience with the unique aspects of organisational cultures that differ across participating agencies and research institutions. Underscoring these suggestions is the importance of practice researchers and agency partners remaining flexible with respect to different role-based expectations and university versus agency-based priorities.

We conclude with two major recommendations for social work researchers and practitioners in the social service organisational milieu. First, developing, maintaining and supporting collaborative, trust-based relationships is essential for PR studies. Relationship-building involves recognising mutually beneficial capabilities and shared objectives across different organisational roles (e.g. service users, staff and managers within the agency, and practice-informed researchers inside and outside the agency) to advance collaborative planning. Supporting relationships can involve power-sharing to promote mutual respect and trust as well as social support, particularly amidst the complex dynamics of PR teams. Sustaining relationships calls for transparent information-sharing, consistent communication to address evolving practice and research dilemmas and reciprocal risk-taking that respects the negotiated boundaries of various partners. Finally, sustained relationships often require continuous boundary spanning within the organisation and between agency and university partners.

For productive PR relationships to evolve, an ongoing assessment of practice and research relationships includes monitoring evolving organisational and community contexts, revisiting shared goals in light of changes, and managing PR project expectations in response to evolving stakeholder needs and ethical challenges. Relational work is perhaps the most essential dimension of collaborative, participatory research with social service organisational partners.

Secondly, for practice researchers and agency-based practitioners, the balancing of diverse relational commitments requires sustained self-reflection . Self-reflection involves considering the tensions between the breadth and depth possible in empirical research as well as between the commitment to peer-reviewed empirical research and the investment in practice-based research (e.g. grey literature, agency statistics, practice wisdom). Self-reflection also relates to addressing the different expectations and emphases of service users, staff, managers and other agency stakeholders as well as the different collaborative roles that researchers are required to play when they are invited to step up as co-leaders or step back (e.g. comfortably serving as a research consultant), depending on the specific needs of the research team in its organisational context. These reflexive considerations are centred in an ethos of collaboratively improving service delivery to enhance service user well-being.

While reflecting on identified tensions is a critical aspect of the efforts of practice researchers in relationship with agency-based partners, it is also essential for researchers located in university-based settings. Self-reflection on these tensions can involve deeper questions of how to: (1) reconcile the often-competing expectations of one’s academic home, one’s social service organisational partners and one’s role as a scholar–researcher and (2) reframe these competing expectations into complementary aims. Regular dialogue involving practice and research partners concerning these two issues can involve iterative processes of shared debriefing, deconstructing and redefining key needs. The overall goal is to find win–wins that benefit the university, agency and oneself in carrying out research and disseminating practical knowledge in community-based organisational settings.

In order to identify mutually beneficial PR opportunities for social service organisational researchers, we propose a research agenda in the form of ten questions designed to promote speculation and dialogue as illustrated in Table 3 . The array of questions captures the tensions related to the different ways that practice researchers: engage and consider collaborating with possible agency partners; transition from the development of participatory research studies to their dissemination in complex agency contexts and sustain participatory studies in larger institutional settings. The questions seek to capture a lifecycle of participatory research projects at different stages of organisational development and across different contexts.

New directions for practice research-informed social service organisational analysis.

In summary, PR is a participatory, organisationally focused approach that combines the search for practice-relevant knowledge with qualitative and quantitative research methods in order to enhance services and promote organisational improvement in diverse contexts. PR therefore complements participatory methodologies as well as other applied social science methods used in social service organisational analysis. The future challenges include promoting more participatory studies of social service organisations as well as articulating additional perspectives on PR processes, applications and implications.

The authors would like to express their appreciation to the anonymous peer reviewers and Editors for their very helpful suggestions regarding the manuscript.

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The Pursuit of Quality for Social Work Practice: Three Generations and Counting

Enola proctor.

Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at Washington University in St. Louis

Social work addresses some of the most complex and intractable human and social problems: poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and child abuse. Our field may be distinct among professions for its efforts to ameliorate the toughest societal problems, experienced by society’s most vulnerable, while working from under-resourced institutions and settings. Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for rigorous assessment and evaluation.

Moreover, social work confronts these challenges as it is ethically bound to deliver high-quality services. Policy and regulatory requirements increasingly demand that social work deliver and document the effectiveness of highest quality interventions and restrict reimbursement to those services that are documented as evidence based. Social work’s future, its very survival, depends on our ability to deliver services with a solid base of evidence and to document their effectiveness. In the words of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW; n.d.) , social work seeks to “champion social progress powered by science.” The research community needs to support practice through innovative and rigorous science that advances the evidence for interventions to address social work’s grand challenges.

My work seeks to improve the quality of social work practice by pursuing answers to three questions:

• What interventions and services are most effective and thus should be delivered in social work practice?
• How do we measure the impact of those interventions and services? (That is, what outcomes do our interventions achieve?)
• How do we implement the highest quality interventions?

This paper describes this work, demonstrates the substantive and methodological progression across the three questions, assesses what we have learned, and forecasts a research agenda for what we still need to learn. Given Aaron Rosen’s role as my PhD mentor and our many years of collaboration, the paper also addresses the role of research mentoring in advancing our profession’s knowledge base.

What Interventions and Services Are Most Effective?

Answering the question “What services are effective?” requires rigorous testing of clearly specified interventions. The first paper I coauthored with Aaron Rosen—“Specifying the Treatment Process: The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 )—provided a framework for evaluating intervention effectiveness. At that time, process and outcomes were jumbled and intertwined concepts. Social work interventions were rarely specified beyond theoretical orientation or level of focus: casework (or direct practice); group work; and macro practice, which included community, agency-level, and policy-focused practice. Moreover, interventions were not named, nor were their components clearly identified. We recognized that gross descriptions of interventions obstruct professional training, preclude fidelity assessment, and prevent accurate tests of effectiveness. Thus, in a series of papers, Rosen and I advocated that social work interventions be specified, clearly labeled, and operationally defined, measured, and tested.

Specifying Interventions

Such specification of interventions is essential to two professional responsibilities: professional education and demonstrating the effectiveness of the field’s interventions. Without specification, interventions cannot be taught. Social work education is all about equipping students with skills to deliver interventions, programs, services, administrative practices, and policies. Teaching interventions requires an ability to name, define, see them in action, measure their presence (or absence), assess the fidelity with which they are delivered, and give feedback to students on how to increase or refine the associated skills.

To advance testing the effectiveness of social work interventions, we drew distinctions between interventions and outcomes and proposed these two constructs as the foci for effectiveness research. We defined interventions as practitioner behaviors that can be volitionally manipulated by practitioners (used or not, varied in intensity and timing), that are defined in detail, can be reliably measured, and can be linked to specific identified outcomes ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ; Rosen & Proctor, 1981 ). This definition foreshadowed the development of treatment manuals, lists of specific evidence-based practices, and calls for monitoring intervention fidelity. Recognizing the variety of intervention types, and to advance their more precise definition and measurement, we proposed that interventions be distinguished in terms of their complexity. Interventive responses comprise discrete or single responses, such as affirmation, expression of empathy, or positive reinforcement. Interventive strategies comprise several different actions that are, together, linked to a designated outcome, such as motivational interviewing. Most complex are interventive programs , which are a variety of intervention actions organized and integrated as a total treatment package; collaborative care for depression or community assertive treatment are examples. To strengthen the professional knowledge base, we also called for social work effectiveness research to begin testing the optimal dose and sequencing of intervention components in relation to attainment of desired outcomes.

Advancing Intervention Effectiveness Research

Our “specifying paper” also was motivated by the paucity of literature at that time on actual social work interventions. Our literature review of 13 major social work journals over 5 years of published research revealed that only 15% of published social work research addressed interventions. About a third of studies described social problems, and about half explored factors associated with the problem ( Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). Most troubling was our finding that only 3% of articles described the intervention or its components in sufficient detail for replication in either research or practice. Later, Fraser (2004) found intervention research to comprise only about one fourth of empirical studies in social work. Fortunately, our situation has improved. Intervention research is more frequent in social work publications, thanks largely to the publication policies of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and Research on Social Work Practice .

Research Priorities

Social work faces important and formidable challenges as it advances research on intervention effectiveness. The practitioner who searches the literature or various intervention lists can find more than 500 practices that are named or that are shown to have evidence from rigorous trials that passes a bar to qualify as evidence-based practices. However, our profession still lacks any organized compendium or taxonomy of interventions that are employed in or found to be effective for social work practice. Existing lists of evidence-based practices, although necessary, are insufficient for social work for several reasons. First, as a 2015 National Academies Institute of Medicine (IOM) report—“Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards” ( IOM, 2015 )—concluded, too few evidence-based practices have been found to be appropriate for low-resource settings or acceptable to minority groups. Second, existing interventions do not adequately reflect the breadth of social work practice. We have too few evidence-based interventions that can inform effective community organization, case management, referral practice, resource development, administrative practice, or policy. Noting that there is far less literature on evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice, a social work task force responding to the 2015 IOM report recommended that this gap be a target of our educational and research efforts ( National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work, 2016 ). And finally, our field—along with other professions that deliver psychosocial interventions—lacks the kinds of procedure codes that can identify the specific interventions we deliver. Documenting social work activities in agency records is increasingly essential for quality assurance and third-party reimbursement.

Future Directions: Research to Advance Evidence on Interventions

Social work has critically important research needs. Our field needs to advance the evidence base on what interventions work for social work populations, practices, and settings. Responding to the 2015 IOM report, the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) identified as a social work priority the development and testing of evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice. As we advance our intervention effectiveness research, we must respond to the challenge of determining the key mechanisms of change ( National Institute of Mental Health, 2016 ) and identify key modifiable components of packaged interventions ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). We need to explore the optimal dosage, ordering, or adapted bundling of intervention elements and advance robust, feasible ways to measure and increase fidelity ( Jaccard, 2016 ). We also need to conduct research on which interventions are most appropriate, acceptable, and effective with various client groups ( Zayas, 2003 ; Videka, 2003 ).

Documenting the Impact of Interventions: Specifying and Measuring Outcomes

Outcomes are key to documenting the impact of social work interventions. My 1978 “specifying” paper with Rosen emphasized that the effectiveness of social work practice could not be adequately evaluated without clear specification and measurement of various types of outcomes. In that paper, we argued that the profession cannot rely only on an assertion of effectiveness. The field must also calibrate, calculate, and communicate its impact.

The nursing profession’s highly successful campaign, based on outcomes research, positioned that field to claim that “nurses save lives.” Nurse staffing ratios were associated with in-hospital and 30-day mortality, independent of patient characteristics, hospital characteristics, or medical treatment ( Person et al., 2004 ). In contrast, social work has often described—sometimes advertised—itself as the low-cost profession. The claim of “cheapest service” may have some strategic advantage in turf competition with other professions. But social work can do better. Our research base can and should demonstrate the value of our work by naming and quantifying the outcomes—the added value of social work interventions.

As a start to this work—a beginning step in compiling evidence about the impact of social work interventions—our team set out to identify the outcomes associated with social work practice. We felt that identifying and naming outcomes is essential for conveying what social work is about. Moreover, outcomes should serve as the focus for evaluating the effectiveness of social work interventions.

We produced two taxonomies of outcomes reflected in published evaluations of social work interventions ( Proctor, Rosen, & Rhee, 2002 ; Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). They included such outcomes as change in clients’ social functioning, resource procurement, problem or symptom reduction, and safety. They exemplify the importance of naming and measuring what our profession can contribute to society. Although social work’s growing body of effectiveness research typically reports outcomes of the interventions being tested, the literature has not, in the intervening 20 years, addressed the collective set of outcomes for our field.

Fortunately, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (AASWSW, n.d.) now provide a framework for communicating social work’s goals. They reflect social work’s added value: improving individual and family well-being, strengthening social fabric, and helping to create a more just society. The Grand Challenges for Social Work include ensuring healthy development for all youth, closing the health gap, stopping family violence, advancing long and productive lives, eradicating social isolation, ending homelessness, creating social responses to a changing environment, harnessing technology for social good, promoting smart decarceration, reducing extreme economic inequality, building financial capability for all, and achieving equal opportunity and justice ( AASWSW, n.d. ).

These important goals appropriately reflect much of what we are all about in social work, and our entire field has been galvanized—energized by the power of these grand challenges. However, the grand challenges require setting specific benchmarks—targets that reflect how far our professional actions can expect to take us, or in some areas, how far we have come in meeting the challenge.

For the past decade, care delivery systems and payment reforms have required measures for tracking performance. Quality measures have become critical tools for all service providers and organizations ( IOM, 2015 ). The IOM defines quality of care as “the degree to which … services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired … outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” ( Lohr, 1990 , p. 21). Quality measures are important at multiple levels of service delivery: at the client level, at the practitioner level, at the organization level, and at the policy level. The National Quality Forum has established five criteria for quality measures: They should address (a) the most important, (b) the most scientifically valid, (c) the most feasible or least burdensome, (d) the most usable, and (e) the most harmonious set of measures ( IOM, 2015 .) Quality measures have been advanced by accrediting groups (e.g., the Joint Commission of the National Committee for Quality Assurance), professional societies, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, quality measures are lacking for key areas of social work practice, including mental health and substance-use treatment. And of the 55 nationally endorsed measures related to mental health and substance use, only two address a psychosocial intervention. Measures used for accreditation and certification purposes often reflect structural capabilities of organizations and their resource use, not the infrastructure required to deliver high-quality services ( IOM, 2015 ). I am not aware of any quality measure developed by our own professional societies or agreed upon across our field.

Future Directions: Research on Quality Monitoring and Measure Development

Although social work as a field lacks a strong tradition of measuring and assessing quality ( Megivern et al., 2007 ; McMillen et al., 2005 ; Proctor, Powell, & McMillen, 2012 ), social work’s role in the quality workforce is becoming better understood ( McMillen & Raffol, 2016 ). The small number of established and endorsed quality measures reflects both limitations in the evidence for effective interventions and challenges in obtaining the detailed information necessary to support quality measurement ( IOM, 2015 ). According to the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) , developing quality measures to capture use of evidence-based interventions is essential for the survival of social work practice in many settings. The task force recommends that social work organizations develop relevant and viable quality measures and that social workers actively influence the implementation of quality measures in their practice settings.

How to Implement Evidence-Based Care

A third and more recent focus of my work addresses this question: How do we implement evidence-based care in agencies and communities? Despite our progress in developing proven interventions, most clients—whether served by social workers or other providers—do not receive evidence-based care. A growing number of studies are assessing the extent to which clients—in specific settings or communities—receive evidence-based interventions. Kohl, Schurer, and Bellamy (2009) examined quality in a core area of social work: training for parents at risk for child maltreatment. The team examined the parent services and their level of empirical support in community agencies, staffed largely by master’s-level social workers. Of 35 identified treatment programs offered to families, only 11% were “well-established empirically supported interventions,” with another 20% containing some hallmarks of empirically supported interventions ( Kohl et al., 2009 ). This study reveals a sizable implementation gap, with most of the programs delivered lacking scientific validation.

Similar quality gaps are apparent in other settings where social workers deliver services. Studies show that only 19.3% of school mental health professionals and 36.8% of community mental health professionals working in Virginia’s schools and community mental health centers report using any evidence-based substance-abuse prevention programs ( Evans, Koch, Brady, Meszaros, & Sadler, 2013 ). In mental health, where social workers have long delivered the bulk of services, only 40% to 50% of people with mental disorders receive any treatment ( Kessler, Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005 ; Merikangas et al., 2011 ), and of those receiving treatment, a fraction receive what could be considered “quality” treatment ( Wang, Demler, & Kessler, 2002 ; Wang et al., 2005 ). These and other studies indicate that, despite progress in developing proven interventions, most clients do not receive evidence-based care. In light of the growth of evidence-based practice, this fact is troubling evidence that testing interventions and publishing the findings is not sufficient to improve quality.

So, how do we get these interventions in place? What is needed to enable social workers to deliver, and clients to receive, high-quality care? In addition to developing and testing evidence-based interventions, what else is needed to improve the quality of social work practice? My work has focused on advancing quality of services through two paths.

Making Effective Interventions Accessible to Providers: Intervention Reviews and Taxonomies

First, we have advocated that research evidence be synthesized and made available to front-line practitioners. In a research-active field where new knowledge is constantly produced, practitioners should not be expected to rely on journal publications alone for information about effective approaches to achieve desired outcomes. Mastering a rapidly expanding professional evidence base has been characterized as a nearly unachievable challenge for practitioners ( Greenfield, 2017 ). Reviews should critique and clarify the intervention’s effectiveness as tested in specific settings, populations, and contexts, answering the question, “What works where, and with whom?” Even more valuable are studies of comparative effectiveness—those that answer, “Which intervention approach works better, where, and when?”

Taxonomies of clearly and consistently labeled interventions will enhance their accessibility and the usefulness of research reports and systematic reviews. A pre-requisite is the consistent naming of interventions. A persistent challenge is the wide variation in names or labels for interventive procedures and programs. Our professional activities are the basis for our societal sanction, and they must be capable of being accurately labeled and documented if we are to describe what our profession “does” to advance social welfare. Increasingly, and in short order, that documentation will be in electronic records that are scrutinized by third parties for purposes of reimbursement and assessment of value toward outcome attainment.

How should intervention research and reviews be organized? Currently, several websites provide lists of evidence-based practices, some with links, citations, or information about dissemination and implementation organizations that provide training and facilitation to adopters. Practitioners and administrators find such lists helpful but often note the challenge in determining which are most appropriate for their needs. In the words of one agency leader, “The drug companies are great at presenting [intervention information] in a very easy form to use. We don’t have people coming and saying, ‘Ah, let me tell you about the best evidence-based practice for cognitive behavioral therapy for depression,’” ( Proctor et al., 2007 , p. 483). We have called for the field to devise decision aids for practitioners to enhance access to the best available empirical knowledge about interventions ( Proctor et al., 2002 ; Proctor & Rosen, 2008 ; Rosen et al., 2003 ). We proposed that intervention taxonomies be organized around outcomes pursued in social work practice, and we developed such a taxonomy based on eight domains of outcomes—those most frequently tested in social work journals. Given the field’s progress in identifying its grand challenges, its associated outcomes could well serve as the organizing focus, with research-tested interventions listed for each challenge. Compiling the interventions, programs, and services that are shown—through research—to help achieve one of the challenges would surely advance our field.

We further urged profession-wide efforts to develop social work practice guidelines from intervention taxonomies ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Practice guidelines are systematically compiled, critiqued, and organized statements about the effectiveness of interventions that are organized in a way to help practitioners select and use the most effective and appropriate approaches for addressing client problems and pursuing desired outcomes.

At that time, we proposed that our published taxonomy of social work interventions could provide a beginning architecture for social work guidelines ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). In 2000, we organized a conference for thought leaders in social work practice. This talented group wrestled with and formulated recommendations for tackling the professional, research, and training requisites to developing social work practice guidelines to enable researchers to access and apply the best available knowledge about interventions ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Fifteen years later, however, the need remains for social work to synthesize its intervention research. Psychology and psychiatry, along with most fields of medical practice, have developed practice guidelines. Although their acceptance and adherence is fraught with challenges, guidelines make evidence more accessible and enable quality monitoring. Yet, guidelines still do not exist for social work.

The 2015 IOM report, “Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards,” includes a conclusion that information on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions is not routinely available to service consumers, providers, and payers, nor is it synthesized. That 2015 IOM report called for systematic reviews to inform clinical guidelines for psychosocial interventions. This report defined psychosocial interventions broadly, encompassing “interpersonal or informational activities, techniques, or strategies that target biological, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, social, or environmental factors with the aim of reducing symptoms and improving functioning or well-being” ( IOM, 2015 , p. 5). These interventions are social work’s domain; they are delivered in the very settings where social workers dominate (behavioral health, schools, criminal justice, child welfare, and immigrant services); and they encompass populations across the entire lifespan within all sociodemographic groups and vulnerable populations. Accordingly, the National Task Force on Evidence Based Practice in Social Work (2016) has recommended the conduct of more systematic reviews of the evidence supporting social work interventions.

If systematic reviews are to lead to guidelines for evidence-based psychosocial interventions, social work needs to be at the table, and social work research must provide the foundation. Whether social work develops its own guidelines or helps lead the development of profession-independent guidelines as recommended by the IOM committee, guidelines need to be detailed enough to guide practice. That is, they need to be accompanied by treatment manuals and informed by research that details the effect of moderator variables and contextual factors reflecting diverse clientele, social determinants of health, and setting resource challenges. The IOM report “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust” sets criteria for guideline development processes ( IOM, 2011 ). Moreover, social work systematic reviews of research and any associated evidence-based guidelines need to be organized around meaningful taxonomies.

Advancing the Science of Implementation

As a second path to ensuring the delivery of high-quality care, my research has focused on advancing the science of implementation. Implementation research seeks to inform how to deliver evidence-based interventions, programs, and policies into real-world settings so their benefits can be realized and sustained. The ultimate aim of implementation research is building a base of evidence about the most effective processes and strategies for improving service delivery. Implementation research builds upon effectiveness research then seeks to discover how to use specific implementation strategies and move those interventions into specific settings, extending their availability, reach, and benefits to clients and communities. Accordingly, implementation strategies must address the challenges of the service system (e.g., specialty mental health, schools, criminal justice system, health settings) and practice settings (e.g., community agency, national employee assistance programs, office-based practice), and the human capital challenge of staff training and support.

In an approach that echoes themes in an early paper, “Specifying the Treatment Process—The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ), my work once again tackled the challenge of specifying a heretofore vague process—this time, not the intervention process, but the implementation process. As a first step, our team developed a taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), which enable a direct test of whether or not a given intervention is adopted and delivered. Although it is overlooked in other types of research, implementation science focuses on this distinct type of outcome. Explicit examination of implementation outcomes is key to an important research distinction. Often, evaluations yield disappointing results about an intervention, showing that the expected and desired outcomes are not attained. This might mean that the intervention was not effective. However, just as likely, it could mean that the intervention was not actually delivered, or it was not delivered with fidelity. Implementation outcomes help identify the roadblocks on the way to intervention adoption and delivery.

Our 2011 taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), became the framework for two national repositories of measures for implementation research: the Seattle Implementation Research Collaborative ( Lewis et al., 2015 ) and the National Institutes of Health GEM measures database ( Rabin et al., 2012 ). These repositories of implementation outcomes seek to harmonize and increase the rigor of measurement in implementation science.

We also have developed taxonomies of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2012 ; Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 , 2015) . Implementation strategies are interventions for system change—how organizations, communities, and providers can learn to deliver new and more effective practices ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

A conversation with a key practice leader stimulated my interest in implementation strategies. Shortly after our school endorsed an MSW curriculum emphasizing evidence-based practices, a pioneering CEO of a major social service agency in St. Louis met with me and asked,

Enola Proctor, I get the importance of delivering evidence based practices. My organization delivers over 20 programs and interventions, and I believe only a handful of them are really evidence based. I want to decrease our provision of ineffective care, and increase our delivery of evidence-based practices. But how? What are the evidence-based ways I, as an agency director, can transform my agency so that we can deliver evidence-based practices?

That agency director was asking a question of how . He was asking for evidence-based implementation strategies. Moving effective programs and practices into routine care settings requires the skillful use of implementation strategies, defined as systematic “methods or techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of a clinical program or practice into routine service” ( Proctor et al., 2013 , p. 2).

This question has shaped my work for the past 15 years, as well as the research priorities of several funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the World Health Organization. Indeed, a National Institutes of Health program announcement—Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health ( National Institutes of Health, 2016 )—identified the discovery of effective implementation strategies as a primary purpose of implementation science. To date, the implementation science literature cannot yet answer that important question, but we are making progress.

To identify implementation strategies, our teams first turned to the literature—a literature that we found to be scattered across a wide range of journals and disciplines. Most articles were not empirical, and most articles used widely differing terms to characterize implementation strategies. We conducted a structured literature review to generate common nomenclature and a taxonomy of implementation strategies. That review yielded 63 distinct implementation strategies, which fell into six groupings: planning, educating, financing, restructuring, managing quality, and attending to policy context ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

Our team refined that compilation, using Delphi techniques and concept mapping to develop conceptually distinct categories of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 ). The refined compilation of 73 discrete implementation strategies was then further organized into nine clusters:

• changing agency infrastructure,
• using financial strategies,
• supporting clinicians,
• providing interactive assistance,
• training and educating stakeholders,
• adapting and tailoring interventions to context,
• developing stakeholder relationships,
• using evaluative and iterative strategies, and
• engaging consumers.

These taxonomies of implementation strategies position the field for more robust research on implementation processes. The language used to describe implementation strategies has not yet “gelled” and has been described as a “Tower of Babel” ( McKibbon et al., 2010 ). Therefore, we also developed guidelines for reporting the components of strategies ( Proctor et al., 2013 ) so researchers and implementers would have more behaviorally specific information about what a strategy is, who does it, when, and for how long. The value of such reporting guidelines is illustrated in the work of Gold and colleagues (2016) .

What have we learned, through our own program of research on implementation strategies—the “how to” of improving practice? First, we have been able to identify from practice-based evidence the implementation strategies used most often. Using novel activity logs to track implementation strategies, Bunger and colleagues (2017) found that strategies such as quality improvement tools, using data experts, providing supervision, and sending clinical reminders were frequently used to facilitate delivery of behavioral health interventions within a child-welfare setting and were perceived by agency leadership as contributing to project success.

Second, reflecting the complexity of quality improvement processes, we have learned that there is no magic bullet ( Powell, Proctor, & Glass, 2013 ). Our study of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinics working to implement evidence-based HIV treatment found that implementers used an average of 25 (plus or minus 14) different implementation strategies ( Rogal, et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the number of implementation strategies used was positively associated with the number of new treatment starts. These findings suggest that implementing new interventions requires considerable effort and resources.

To advance our understanding of the effectiveness of implementation strategies, our teams have conducted a systematic review ( Powell et al., 2013 ), tested specific strategies, and captured practice-based evidence from on-the-ground implementers. Testing the effectiveness of implementation strategies has been identified as a top research priority by the IOM (2009) . In work with Charles Glisson in St. Louis, our 15-agency-based randomized clinical trial found that an organizational-focused intervention—the attachment, regulatory, and competency model—improved agency culture and climate, stimulated more clinicians to enroll in evidence-based-practice training, and boosted clinical effect sizes of various evidence-based practices ( Glisson, Williams, Hemmelgarn, Proctor, & Green, 2016a , 2016b ). And in a hospital critical care unit, the implementation strategies of developing a team, selecting and using champions, provider education sessions, and audit and feedback helped increase team adherence to phlebotomy guidelines ( Steffen et al., in press ).

We are also learning about the value of different strategies. Experts in implementation science and implementation practice identified as most important the strategies of “use evaluate and iterative approaches” and “train and educate stakeholders.” Reported as less helpful were such strategies as “access new funding streams” and “remind clinicians of practices to use” ( Waltz et al., 2015 ). Successful implementers in Veterans Affairs clinics relied more heavily on such strategies as “change physical structures and equipment” and “facilitate relay of clinical data to providers” than did less successful implementers ( Rogal et al., 2017 ).

Many strategies have yet to be investigated empirically, as has the role of dissemination and implementation organizations—organizations that function to promote, provide information about, provide training in, and scale up specific treatments. Most evidence-based practices used in behavioral health, including most listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Registry of Promising and Effective Practices, are disseminated and distributed by dissemination and implementation organizations. Unlike drugs and devices, psychosocial interventions have no Federal Drug Administration-like delivery system. Kreuter and Casey (2012) urge better understanding and use of the intervention “delivery system,” or mechanisms to bring treatment discoveries to the attention of practitioners and into use in practice settings.

Implementation strategies have been shown to boost clinical effectiveness ( Glisson et al., 2010 ), reduce staff turnover ( Aarons, Sommerfield, Hect, Silvosky, & Chaffin, 2009 ) and help reduce disparities in care ( Balicer et al., 2015 ).

Future directions: Research on implementation strategies

My work in implementation science has helped build intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field. Yet, we continue to lack understanding of many issues. What strategies are used in usual implementation practice, by whom, for which empirically supported interventions? What strategies are effective in which organizational and policy contexts? Which strategies are effective in attaining which specific implementation outcomes? For example, are the strategies that are effective for initial adoption also effective for scale up, spread, and sustained use of interventions? Social workers have the skill set for roles as implementation facilitators, and refining packages of implementation strategies that are effective in social service and behavioral health settings could boost the visibility, scale, and impact of our work.

The Third Generation and Counting

Social work faces grand, often daunting challenges. We need to develop a more robust base of evidence about the effectiveness of interventions and make that evidence more relevant, accessible, and applicable to social work practitioners, whether they work in communities, agencies, policy arenas, or a host of novel settings. We need to advance measurement-based care so our value as a field is recognized. We need to know how to bring proven interventions to scale for population-level impact. We need to discover ways to build capacity of social service agencies and the communities in which they reside. And we need to learn how to sustain advances in care once we achieve them ( Proctor et al., 2015 ). Our challenges are indeed grand, far outstripping our resources.

So how dare we speak of a quality quest? Does it not seem audacious to seek the highest standards in caring for the most vulnerable, especially in an era when we face a new political climate that threatens vulnerable groups and promises to strip resources from health and social services? Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for assessment and evaluation. Quality may be an audacious goal, but as social workers we can pursue no less. By virtue of our code of ethics, our commitment to equity, and our skills in intervening on multiple levels of systems and communities, social workers are ideally suited for advancing quality.

Who will conduct the needed research? Who will pioneer its translation to improving practice? Social work practice can be only as strong as its research base; the responsibility for developing that base, and hence improve practice, is lodged within social work research.

If my greatest challenge is pursuing this quest, my greatest joy is in mentoring the next generation for this work. My research mentoring has always been guided by the view that the ultimate purpose of research in the helping professions is the production and systemization of knowledge for use by practitioners ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). For 27 years, the National Institute of Mental Health has supported training in mental health services research based in the Center for Mental Health Services Research ( Hasche, Perron, & Proctor, 2009 ; Proctor & McMillen, 2008 ). And, with colleague John Landsverk, we are launching my sixth year leading the Implementation Research Institute, a training program for implementation science supported by the National Institute of Mental Health ( Proctor et al., 2013 ). We have trained more than 50 social work, psychology, anthropology, and physician researchers in implementation science for mental health. With three more cohorts to go, we are working to assess what works in research training for implementation science. Using bibliometric analysis, we have learned that intensive training and mentoring increases research productivity in the form of published papers and grants that address how to implement evidence-based care in mental health and addictions. And, through use of social network analysis, we have learned that every “dose” of mentoring increases scholarly collaboration when measured two years later ( Luke, Baumann, Carothers, Landsverk, & Proctor, 2016 ).

As his student, I was privileged to learn lessons in mentoring from Aaron Rosen. He treated his students as colleagues, he invited them in to work on the most challenging of questions, and he pursued his work with joy. When he treated me as a colleague, I felt empowered. When he invited me to work with him on the field’s most vexing challenges, I felt inspired. And as he worked with joy, I learned that work pursued with joy doesn’t feel like work at all. And now the third, fourth, and fifth generations of social work researchers are pursuing tough challenges and the quality quest for social work practice. May seasoned and junior researchers work collegially and with joy, tackling the profession’s toughest research challenges, including the quest for high-quality social work services.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by IRI (5R25MH0809160), Washington University ICTS (2UL1 TR000448-08), Center for Mental Health Services Research, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Center for Dissemination and Implementation, Institute for Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis.

This invited article is based on the 2017 Aaron Rosen Lecture presented by Enola Proctor at the Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference—“Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth”—held January 11–15, 2017, in New Orleans, LA. 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 utilization of research in practice.

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News Details

Exploring sustainable development & the human impact of natural disasters

Authored by: Carson Easterly

Photography by: Krista Patton

Faculty & Research

A Q&A with research assistant professor Chenyi Ma

What factors allow people to prepare for and recover from natural disasters?  Dr. Chenyi Ma , a research assistant professor at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2), conducts interdisciplinary research that investigates the role of inequality in disasters’ impact and points to policy solutions. Having first come to SP2 as a  PhD in Social Welfare  student, he now teaches SP2 students while conducting research on disaster risk reduction and sustainable development. 

What drew you to SP2 and Penn? 

Disaster research requires interdisciplinary collaboration, and Penn is the ideal place. I have mentors at SP2, Wharton, and Engineering and access to rich, multidisciplinary academic resources. SP2’s social justice mission and commitment to sustainable development also align with my values.

Twelve years ago, I came to SP2 as a student in the PhD in Social Welfare Program. I continued my research on the human impacts of natural disasters as a post-doctoral student.  Now, as a research assistant professor at SP2, I focus on the social determinants of health and behavioral outcomes in disaster contexts, including public health emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Before joining Penn, you worked as a program officer for Education for Sustainable Development at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). How does that background connect to your research and teaching? 

My work at WWF focused on promoting a holistic approach known as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). With a student-centered learning approach similar to social work education, ESD empowers individuals with the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes needed to make informed decisions and take responsible actions for environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society.  ESD also encourages researchers to employ Community-Based Participatory Action Research (CBPAR) — a collaborative research approach that involves community members — to foster both researchers’ and community members’ knowledge and ability to sustainably manage their local natural resources while respecting, and even sometimes using, indigenous culture, knowledge, and social infrastructure. Student-centered teaching and collaborative research continue to be important themes of my work.

How would you define sustainable development?

Sustainable development is about meeting present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. This approach encompasses social, economic, and political dimensions. My current research delves into the social dimension, recognizing that addressing environmental challenges requires collaboration and co-learning among natural and social scientists, professionals, and stakeholders to find solutions. 

You currently research social vulnerability and disaster preparedness, housing and urban resilience, environmental justice, energy policy, and social epidemiology. What drew you to these research interests?

One of the most important components of sustainable development is disaster risk reduction. As a student at Washington University’s Master of Social Work program and SP2’s PhD program, I began to think of questions about the people affected by disaster risk — for instance, who is more likely to suffer from damage as a result of natural disasters? Which survivors of disasters are more susceptible to mental illness? Do existing social policy programs adequately address the needs of disaster victims?

To answer these questions and others, I began to conduct empirical research. For example, using large datasets and GIS mapping, I led a project that examined the severity of home damage caused by Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Homes occupied by renters were four times more likely to have been destroyed than those occupied by homeowners. This is direct evidence that low-income renters are extremely socially vulnerable to housing damage caused by climate-related disasters.  

Through another study, I found there were racial and ethnic disparities in the prevalence of mental illness among Hurricane Sandy survivors in New Jersey and New York City. Such disparities, largely accounted for by different levels of exposure to a disaster, underscore the need for increased provision of social support to more susceptible groups to effectively mitigate these risks.

What kind of an impact do you hope your work can have on policy in the face of climate inequality?

I hope policymakers might consider public-private partnerships like the National Flood Insurance Program to address private insurance affordability for low-income households who are most vulnerable to housing damage. One of my recent research studies examined how income inequality could influence household consumption behaviors related to disaster preparedness, with a specific focus on private homeowners’ insurance. Observing Hurricane Maria survivors in Puerto Rico, the study found that private homeowners’ insurance — the most important financial tool to mitigate property losses — was unaffordable for low-income households, and income inequality further exacerbated this unaffordability.  

Another of my current studies provides new insight into how public assistance, such as cash transfer welfare programs, can effectively address vulnerable groups who have a high level of risk perception and the intention to prepare for disasters, yet lack the financial resources to do so. The study examines the progress of human behavioral changes for disaster preparedness along three developmental stages, from “not prepared,” to “have the intention to prepare,” and ultimately to “already prepared.” The preliminary findings of this study suggest disparities between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. While Hispanics are more likely to have the  intention  to prepare and exhibit higher levels of risk perception than non-Hispanic whites, they are less likely to take concrete actions of preparedness. This is largely due to the  unequal  access to preparedness resources between the two groups.  

You’ve taught the course Quantitative Reasoning and Program Evaluations at SP2. What are some highlights of your work in the classroom?   

The students and their research projects are always the highlight of my time in the classroom. I view my role as a facilitator who works with them to build their research capacity for completing their own projects. One significant component of ESD is learning by doing. My Penn students adopt a “learning by researching” approach to focus on ways in which their research projects can practically address critical issues in their communities, including environmental, health, and political issues. 

What are you looking forward to discovering next?

I am continuing to explore maladaptive responses to climate-related disasters and public health emergencies. My previous research found that natural disaster survivors often exhibit adaptation behaviors, including maladaptive behaviors like increased alcohol use, after a disaster when they lack financial assistance for recovery. For a current project, I am examining household decision-making processes and underlying maladaptive responses to energy insecurity during the pandemic. My hope is to provide new insights into how energy policies can be more responsive to future disasters. 

Chenyi Ma, MSW, PhD

Research Assistant Professor

office: 215.746.8976

machenyi@upenn.edu

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• Description
• Aims and Scope
• Editorial Board
• Abstracting / Indexing
• Submission Guidelines

There is a growing movement in social work toward a more empirical selection of therapies and interventions because, to be effective, you have to know what works. As the community of practitioners, scholars and students interested in applying scientific methods of analysis to social work problems continues to grow, the need for a publication dedicated to social work practice outcomes has never been greater. Research on Social Work Practice is the first professional social work journal to focus on evaluation research and on validating methods of assessment in social work practice.

Vital Information Research on Social Work Practice is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the assessment methods and outcomes of social work practice.  Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal or interpersonal importance.  Interventions include behavior analysis and therapy; psychotherapy or counseling with individuals; case management; education; supervision; practice involving couples, families, or small groups; advocacy; community practice; organizational management; and the evaluation of social policies.

The journal primarily serves as an outlet for the publication of:

• Original reports of evidence-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice.
• Original reports of empirical studies on the development and validation of social work assessment methods.
• Original evidence-based reviews of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice.  The two types of review articles considered for publication are: 1) reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention; and 2) reviews of evidence-based interventions applicable to a particular psychosocial problem.

Comprehensive Coverage Each issue of Research on Social Work Practice brings you the latest scholarship to help bridge the gap between research and practice. Regular features include: Outcome Studies New Methods of Assessment Scholarly Reviews Invited Essays Book Reviews

In-Depth Special Issues Research on Social Work Practice frequently supplements its broad coverage with in-depth studies of topics of particular concern through Special Issues or Special Sections. Previous examples include:

• Research on Social Work Practice in Chinese Communities (Vol.12, n.4)
• Honoring Walter W. Hudson (Vol.12, n.1)
• Flexner Revisited (Vol.11, n.2)
• Research on Social Work Practice in Ireland (Vol.10, n.6)
• Technology and Social Work (Vol.10, n.4)
• Australian Social Work Research (Vol.10, n.2)

By connecting practice and research in an artful and readable fashion, RSWP has provided a synergy for the helping professions — the vital recognition that without research, practice is blind; and without practice, research is mute. — Martin Bloom Professor, School of Social Work, University of Connecticut In the relatively few years since its inception, Research on Social Work Practice has become one of the most highly respected and frequently cited journals in our field. Researchers, practitioners, and students have all found its contents to be invaluable in their work. — Dianne Harrison Montgomery Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, Florida State University   The unique manner in which the editors cover the broad spectrum of research on social work practice is destined to make the journal become a classic in the field. This is a must reading for all engaged in any level of practice research. — Moses Newsome, Jr. Dean, School of Social Work, Norfolk State University Past-President, Council on Social Work Education This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

Research on Social Work Practice , sponsored by the Society for Social Work and Research, is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the methods and outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance, including behavior analysis or psychotherapy involving individuals; case management; practice involving couples, families, and small groups; community practice education; and the development, implementation, and evaluation of social policies.

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Guidelines for Authors

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) is a peer-reviewed disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance. Interventions include, but are not limited to, behavior analysis and therapy, psychotherapy or counseling with individuals, cognitive therapy, case management/care coordination, education, supervision, practice involving couples, families, or small groups, advocacy, community practice, organizational management, and the evaluation of social policies. At least one author of a submitted article must be a professional social worker, and/or the interventions evaluated must have been provided by professional social workers.

The journal will primarily serve as an outlet for the publication of:

1. Original reports of empirically-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice;

2. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice. The only two types of systematic reviews considered for publication are:

A. Systematic reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention or assessment method, or B. Systematic reviews of different psychosocial interventions applicable to clients with a particular psychosocial problem.

The journal welcomes empirical research appropriately derived from a variety of etiological and intervention theories, as well as studies which focus on evaluations not based upon formal theoretical frameworks. Studies using diverse methodologies, such as group or single-system research designs, qualitative approaches, mixed methods approaches, and interdisciplinary works are welcome to be submitted. Replication studies are welcome, as are well-designed studies with negative findings or reports of treatment failures. Authors are encouraged to submit only articles of the highest quality for editorial review and possible publication. The submission of seriously flawed or marginal studies is discouraged. Reports of inferential statistics involving significant differences must be accompanied by suitable measures of effect sizes and their appropriate confidence intervals, and include a discussion of the practical impact indicated by these effects.

Articles reporting original research involving data collection from human beings must include a statement indicating the source of Institutional Review Board Approval (blinded in the original submission) or a clear statement addressing why IRB review was not necessary.

Manuscripts which do not fit into one of the above two categories should not be submitted, and if received will be promptly returned to the author un-reviewed. Occasionally other types of submissions are published in the journal (e.g., guest editorials, conference proceedings, research center descriptions), but these are usually invited and accepted at the discretion of the Editor.

Inappropriate Submissions: The journal does not usually publish narrative case studies, surveys, program descriptions, theoretical, philosophical or conceptual works, correlational investigations, historical reviews, retrospective predictor studies, purely methodological articles, descriptive studies, or needs assessments. The journal no longer accepts for review psychometric studies, reports of the development and validation testing of measurement methods useful for research or practice . Authors are urged to submit such studies to the many other social work journals which do not have the intervention-research focus of Research on Social Work Practice . The journal publishes occasional special issues devoted to a particular topic and readers with an interest in proposing a topic for such a special issue and to serve as a Guest Editor for that issue are welcome to contact the Editor.

Authors are encouraged to make pre-publication use of a data-depository ( http://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories#general ) to ensure post-publication access to their data and to indicate this in the submitted manuscript. At a minimum, reports of original data-based research should include a statement from the authors indicating where qualified researchers may obtain a copy of the data and data-coding manual (this is usually the corresponding author). This stipulation is to encourage transparency in the reporting process and to promote re-analysis and replication efforts by independent scholars.

Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to have their submission carefully edited by English language experts prior to submission. Sage Publications Inc. offers such a service, which can be located at: http://languageservices.sagepub.com/en/

Authors not familiar with current APA style are encouraged to review the free online style guides provided by the American Psychological Association, which can be located at:

http://www.apastyle.org/index.aspx?_ga=1.161514751.2121075784.1468782120 . Submissions out of compliance with APA style will be returned un-reviewed.

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . 

ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID iDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID iD then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP)  may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.

If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

Visit the Sage Journals and Preprints page for more details about preprints.

Guidelines for Preparing Quantitative Outcome Studies

The journal requires that accepted quantitative manuscripts be formatted in compliance with the Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) found in the sixth edition of the APA Publication Manual . Note that apart from general guidelines, there are separate additional guidelines for reporting quasi-experimental and experimental studies, as well as for meta-analyses. There are also guidelines for reporting a study participant flow chart, which should be included in nomothetic outcome studies. Mixed methods papers including quantitative analyses should have these elements of the article compliant with these guidelines. Causal inferences, if any, should be made conservatively and not go beyond the limits imposed by the presented methods and data.

Single-case research studies which build upon traditional case narrative reports by adding the systematic and empirical measurement of clinically relevant variables (e.g., client’s problems or strengths) before, during and after treatment begins, are welcome submissions. Outcome measures must have acceptable levels of reliability and validity, the intervention must be well-described, and any causal inferences drawn must not go beyond those legitimately derived from the data. Data must be presented in the form of line graphs. The guidelines by Kratochwill et al. (2010) are recommended in this regard.

Articles reporting the results of a quasi-experimental outcome study must follow the standards found in the Transparent Reporting of Evaluation Studies using Nonrandomized Designs (TREND) checklist. Include a completed TREND Checklist as an appendix to your paper. See http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/ .

Articles reporting a randomized controlled trial must follow the Consolidated Reporting Standards for Randomized Trials (CONSORT), and include a completed CONSORT Checklist. See http://www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/ . The authors of outcome studies evaluating non-pharmacological interventions (e.g., psychosocial treatments) are urged to familiarize themselves with relevant guidelines useful for reporting such studies. Grant et al. (2013) is a recommended resource for authors to consult, as is Boutron, Ravaud and Moher (2012).

Authors submitting a randomized clinical trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental outcome study for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered their study protocol in a suitable clinical trials registry , such as clinicaltrials.gov. The article by Harrison and Mayo-Wilson (2014) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering their protocol. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any clinical trials registry they have submitted their protocol to.

Guidelines for Preparing Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

RSWP welcomes well-crafted empirically-based reviews of the treatment literature. Such manuscripts should present either the evidence regarding a particular psychosocial intervention , various interventions for a particular psychosocial problem or a critical review of treatment studies focused on a particular disorder, problem or condition. Review articles should have a clear social work focus, and cite the relevant social work literature, if any exists, in addition to pertinent findings from the broader behavioral and social sciences. Manuscripts of this type should provide the reader with clear and compelling applications to practice, not untested implications.

Articles claiming to be a Systematic Review should adhere to the guidelines for preparing systematic reviews developed by the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins & Green, 2009) or the Campbell Collaboration (2014). In addition, the authors of systematic reviews and meta-analyses must follow the guidelines found in the PRISMA Statement ( Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses ), found at: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ .

If the article does not follow these standards, the paper should be titled as A Narrative Review, or simply A Review , and the specific term Systematic Review should be avoided.

Authors submitting a systematic review for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered the review protocol in a suitable registry, such as PROSPERO ( www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO ). The article by Stewart, Moher and Shekelle (2012) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering systematic review protocols. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any registry in which the protocol is published.

The EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency of Health Research) is a recommended resource for authors preparing studies for submission to RSWP which deal with the general topic of health care. See http://www.equator-network.org/ .

Completed copies of relevant TREND, CONSORT or PRISMA checklists should be included as a separate supplemental file when submitting the manuscript online.

Guidelines for Preparing Qualitative Studies

RSWP welcomes well-written rigorous qualitative outcome studies. Studies of the processes of an intervention, absent credible evidence that the intervention actually produces positive effects, are not invited for submission. Authors are encouraged to judiciously take advantage of the journal’s lack of a page limitation and craft a manuscript that details the context and methods to provide transparency of the study. The qualitative methodology used must be consistent throughout the study. The sampling, data collection, and analysis should make sense considering the chosen research question and the method. Authors should describe strategies employed to ensure the trustworthiness and credibility of the study, and provide a replicable audit trail. Qualitative data analysis software may be appropriately used in the analysis, but is not required. For suggestions on creating well-written qualitative article consult Fawcett et al. (2014), Staller and Krumer-Nevo (2013) and Pratt (2009).

How to submit a manuscript: The journal requires authors to use the MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL web-based portal to submit their manuscripts. The submission portal is available via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rswp

Use of the Journal Article Reporting Standards: All submissions are required to be prepared using the formatting standards found in the 6th Edition (2010) of the APA Publication Manual. Authors of data-based papers are specifically asked to adhere to the relevant Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS). The Editor is available to consult with you about any questions you may have regarding complying with these standards. They have been adopted to help promote consistency in research reporting, to try and further elevate the standards of work appearing in Research on Social Work Practice , and to ultimately improve the credibility of research findings available to the profession and the public. The abstracts of research articles must include the following headings: Purpose:, Methods:, Results:, Conclusions:. Manuscripts not adhering to current APA style conventions will be returned to the authors un-reviewed and with a request to revise their paper and to resubmit it. A very common error is for authors to inappropriately include the issue number following the volume number, in citations to articles appearing in journals paginated by year. See the APA manual if you are not clear when issue numbers should and should not be included. Some bibliographic software programs automatically include issue numbers, and these should be manually deleted, if necessary.

All manuscripts should include an abstract on a separate page that contains no more than 150 words, and also a separate title page (designated as Title Page) which includes: 1) title of the article; 2) corresponding author's full name, current position, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers; 3) co-author(s)' full name(s) and affiliation(s); 4) up to five key words as they should appear if they were to be published. Manuscripts will not be considered for submission if they do not include these elements. Tables and/or Figures are to be included when necessary to depict the results. There is no specific limit on the total number of pages, tables or figures.

Authors submitting manuscripts are protected by common law against the unauthorized use of their unpublished work. Specifically, an unpublished manuscript is considered to be a confidential or privileged paper. All reviewers will be asked to destroy or return the manuscript after their review is completed; in addition, reviewers will be asked not to circulate, quote, cite, or refer to the unpublished work in any way unless specific permission is granted by the author.

Artwork Submissions

High-resolution figures should be uploaded as separate electronic files, with callouts for each in the text. Figure legends should include full explanations of the figures and be typewritten double-spaced with numbers corresponding to those on the figure files themselves. All figures must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, and PDF Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for vector art (line art). Permission for use of the copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. All artwork must be camera ready.

Tables should be numbered consecutively corresponding to in-text citation. Each table should be prepared on a separate page at the end of the text document and preferably should be no larger than a single page. Include a brief descriptive title of the table and a footnote with explanation of any abbreviations. All tables must be specifically referred to in the text for placement and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Elements in tables should be separated by tabs, not cells or lines.

Conflict of Interest

Authors are required to disclose any commercial, financial, or other associations that could pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted article and these must be disclosed on the title page at the time of submission.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

Authors should list all funding sources (and ID numbers, as appropriate) related to the study and to the article preparation.

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be required to complete an electronic copyright transfer form. From SageTRACK website “Corresponding Author Center” choose the correct manuscript from “Manuscripts with Decisions” and from the ACTION box on the far right side, choose “Contributor Form.” After reading the form and completing the appropriate boxes, clicking the “I accept” box will confirm appropriate copyright transfer.

Authors are required to submit written permission from the original publisher to reprint copyright-protected material, including quoted material of 300 words or more from a single source (journal article or book).

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in this journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal must not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar content. All authors of a submitted manuscript must be made aware of and consent to the submission.

Publish Ahead of Print With OnlineFirst

OnlineFirst is a feature in which completed articles are published online prior to their inclusion in a print issue, offering authors the advantage of making their research accessible to the public in a more timely manner. Only online subscribers can view these PDFs, but abstracts are available to the public to view for free. Each OnlineFirst manuscript is citable by the publication date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), providing a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment. You can cite OnlineFirst articles as follows:

Author’s last name, first initials. Article title. Journal title. Pre-published month day, year; DOI: 10.1177/ 0123456789123456

Once your article has completed the production process and before it is published in a print issue, it will be posted online. You can access RSWP OnlineFirst articles on the Web at http://rswp.sagepub.com/pap.dtl . Once posted online, articles may not be retracted or edited. If your article is not completed prior to its publication date, it will not go on OnlineFirst but will be posted online with the issue in which it is published.

The journal uses a blind peer review system to evaluate manuscripts, and the expertise of the Editorial Board members is augmented by the extensive use of Guest Reviewers. Most authors receive an initial editorial decision within two months of submission, accompanied by constructive peer commentary. Most articles eventually accepted for publication undergo extensive author-completed revisions, based on peer-review commentary, prior to acceptance. The journal has a modest backlog of accepted manuscripts, thus authors of accepted manuscripts can expect a lag of about 12 months or less, from final acceptance to print publication. However, the journal has a publish-ahead-of-print service in that the final, corrected and accepted version of their paper will be published electronically on the journal’s website, with a ‘doi’. This will permit its ready access to the community of scholars, students, and practitioners months ahead of print publication. These articles will be both citable and downloadable. Articles are published in the general order of their acceptance.

Boutron, I., Ravaud, P. & Moher, D. (2012). Randomized clinical trials of nonpharmacological treatments. New York: CRC Press.

Campbell Collaboration. (2014). Campbell Collaboration systematic review: Policies and guidelines. The Campbell Collaboration. Available from www.campbellcollaboration.org

Fawcett, S. E., Waller, M. A., Miller, J. W., Schwieterman, M. A., Hazen, B. T., & Overstreet, R. E. (2014). A trail guide to publishing success: Tips on writing influential conceptual, qualitative, and survey sesearch. Journal of Business Logistics , 35 (1), 1-16.

Grant, S., Montgomery, P., Hopewell, S., Macdonald, G., Hoher, D. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2013). Developing a reporting guideline for social and psychological intervention trials. Research on Social Work Practice, 23, 595-602.

Harrison, B. A. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2014). Trial registration: Understanding and preventing

bias in social work research. Research on Social Work Practice, 24, 372-376.

Kratochwill, T. R., Hitchcock, J., Horner, R. H., Levin, J. R., Odom, S. L., Rindskopf, D. M. &

Shadish, W. R. (2010). Single-case designs technical documentation . Retrieved from What Works Clearinghouse website: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Document/229

Pratt, M. G. (2009). From the editors: For the lack of a boilerplate: Tips on writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal , 52 , 856-862.

Staller, K. M., & Krumer-Nevo, M. (2013). Successful qualitative articles: A tentative list of cautionary advice. Qualitative Social Work , 12 , 247-253.

Stewart, L., Moher, D. & Shekelle, P. (2012). Why prospective registration of systematic reviews makes sense. Systematic Reviews, 1 :7. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-7

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The Indian Journal of Social Work

Rajib Das Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

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Cultural Compulsion vis-à-vis Poor Sanitation in Cities: Open Defecation in Delhi

This article examines the practice of open defecation (OD) and access to sanitation facilities under the Swachh Bharat Mission. Open defecation is rampant in areas where sanitation is poor. Data for the study was collected from three slums across all the three Municipal Corporations of Delhi through face-to-face interviews. The data revealed that the factors behind poor sanitation and OD are mostly associated with lack of basic facilities and inadequate sanitary infrastructure rather than ‘individual defiance’ to use toilets.

Keywords: sanitation; open defecation; cultural compulsion; Delhi; Swachh Bharat Mission

DOI: 10.32444/IJSW.2023.84.4.447-462

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Chemical Society Reviews

Bridging the gap between academic research and industrial development in advanced all-solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries.

* Corresponding authors

a Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 S Cass Ave, Lemont, IL 60439, USA E-mail: [email protected] , [email protected]

b Eastern Institute for Advanced Study, Eastern Institute of Technology, Ningbo, Zhejiang, P. R. China

c Laurel Heights Secondary School, 650 Laurelwood Dr, Waterloo, ON, Canada

The energy storage and vehicle industries are heavily investing in advancing all-solid-state batteries to overcome critical limitations in existing liquid electrolyte-based lithium-ion batteries, specifically focusing on mitigating fire hazards and improving energy density. All-solid-state lithium–sulfur batteries (ASSLSBs), featuring earth-abundant sulfur cathodes, high-capacity metallic lithium anodes, and non-flammable solid electrolytes, hold significant promise. Despite these appealing advantages, persistent challenges like sluggish sulfur redox kinetics, lithium metal failure, solid electrolyte degradation, and manufacturing complexities hinder their practical use. To facilitate the transition of these technologies to an industrial scale, bridging the gap between fundamental scientific research and applied R&D activities is crucial. Our review will address the inherent challenges in cell chemistries within ASSLSBs, explore advanced characterization techniques, and delve into innovative cell structure designs. Furthermore, we will provide an overview of the recent trends in R&D and investment activities from both academia and industry. Building on the fundamental understandings and significant progress that has been made thus far, our objective is to motivate the battery community to advance ASSLSBs in a practical direction and propel the industrialized process.

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