Training, Funding, Conference Presentations from QI4

A group of social workers met at the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry in May 2008. We identified many issues specific to social work and strategies for dealing with them.

Education

There is an on-going need for training in qualitative social work research. Most of us got our training from members of other disciplines. As helpful and enlightening as that training is, there are issues that are unique to social work, such as research on sensitive issues, ethics, the inherent vulnerability of most of our research informants, the mismatch between our training as social workers and the realities of doing social work and researching social work, the need for approaches to social work research that match the scope of our work.

At the meeting, attendees responded enthusiastically to the suggestion that we hold summer training institutes. Jim Drisko said that Smith College is already set up for continuing education, and he would see about how to arrange training sessions there. Several other attendees said they would be willing to contribute to the planning and would also be willing to teach at Smith for short periods. Jim said attendees could get continuing education credits. These sessions would be done in one to five day formats.

Jane Gilgun said that she had talked to members of the research committee at the University of Minnesota School of Social Work about summer training. This training could be for course credit as well as for continuing education credits. Like Smith, Minnesota could give ceus but they could also give course credit.

Funding

Another topic discussed at the meeting was funding for qualitative research. Several attendeeds had funding from foundations and from state agencies and a few from federal agencies. Much of the time, the funding goes to social service agencies who then hire University researchers to do the research. Many foundations will only fund agencies and will not fund University researchers. The CDC funds social work projects, but often the money goes to agencies and that could well be CDC's preference.

So, we talked about the kinds of research that social workers do that is fundable. Of course, mixed methods is fundable, and that is always an option. Most of us have a small track record for surveys and experiments and so our chances for funding are low if we go it as sole p.i., but if we team up with a well-known survey researcher and have a credible statistical consultant, then our chances go way up.

In particular, among the kinds of research that social workers can do and that are fundable are the following

--research on implementation and uptake of interventions. Often, in RCTs, interventions appear to work but in practice they show lower success rates. Qualitative research can take a good look at what goes on during the implementation phase and how and why clients respond or do not respond to treatment. This would require interviews over time where researchers build relationships of trust with clients os that clients can be frank and also good relationships with researchers for the same reason. Observations and case record reviews would also be helpful to understand implementation and uptake. These can be intrusive and so the planning would have to be careful. Some case records are founts of information and others are not. Sometimes interventions can be tape recorded and/or videotaped and analyzed later.

--research on how programs work. Interviews, observations, and case record reviews can identify factors associated with good, poor, and mixed outcomes. This approache answers the questions what works with whom under what conditions.

--research on both the conditions we want to change and on the effects of the interventions that we craft. Einat Peled of Tel Aviv University has five year project that involves first research on family violence, then the crafting of interventions to respond to family violence, and then an evaluation of the intervention. This is ideal for many social work researchers. We often intervene into situations we don't fully understand and then our interventions don't work. A fuller understanding of the clients' situations will increase the likelihood that our interventions will be successful.

Three or Four Panels for QI5

We would like to do three or four panels on social work qualitative research to make social work more prominent on the program, to learn from each other, and to network. Many suggestions for topics came up, such as the ones that I just discussed above. There will be more on this blog about the panels, funding, and training. Stay tuned. Let us know what you think.