Lectures
Group work
Experiential classroom activities
Audio-visual presentations.
Course content will be guided by research, empirical knowledge and best practice. The following values and principles, consistent with professional standards, inform course content.
- Best practices in social work include the integration of research into practice.
- Professional development requires the ongoing review of new knowledge on topics related to social work practice and the issues relevant to clients.
- Practitioners must be able to critically evaluate the quality of research design and findings for quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research, and demonstrate discernment when integrating research into practice.
- Practitioners’ understanding of the limits of knowledge is essential to best practice.
- Research methods have ethical implications and methods employed by social workers in research are congruent with social work values.
- Research topics and design are influenced by personal, temporal, and historical factors.
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Produce a literature review (from on-line databases and/or printed journals) relevant to social work;
- Review and critique research methods described in published research articles;
- Articulate a research question;
- Apply principles of ethical research design and methods to create an outline for a research proposal;
- Apply qualitative, quantitative, and mixed-methods research methodologies/ methods to create a research design;
- Identify the best statistical analysis for a research design;
- Demonstrate reflexivity with regard to a chosen research topic and design.
Written papers
Presentations
Research proposal
Classroom activities and participation
Examinations.
Text(s) such as the following, the list to be updated periodically:
Becker, S., Bryman, A. & Ferguson, H. (Eds). (2012). Understanding research for social policy and social work: Themes, methods and approaches, (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Dudley, J. (2011). Research methods for social work: Being producers and consumers of research (2nd ed.). Toronto: Pearson.
Engel, R. & Schutt, R. (2012). The practice of research in social work (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Field, A. (2009). Discovering statistics using SPSS (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Maxwell, J.A. (2013). Qualitative research design: An interactive approach (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Rubin, A. & Babbie, E. (2011). Research methods for social work (7th ed.). Brooks/Cole.
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