Jane Littlewood

Applied Research for Better Practice

Research and Practice - Epistemology and Theory in Social Work - Purposes and Values of Research - A Methodology for the Research-Minded Practitioners - Formulating the Issues in Research-Minded Practice - Engaging with Subjects to Generate Data - Analysing the Data of Practice - The Practitioner-Evaluator - Conclusion

Coping with Home Dialysis

This paper describes and discusses the results of an exploratory and smallscale study of 20 renal patients treated by dialysis at home. The conceptual framework explored tasks and coping alongside the uncertainty, powerlessness, and scarcity experienced by people undergoing home dialysis. The range of coping strategies, styles of coping, and illness role which were adopted by the respondents, and the implications of these are examined in relation to theories of coping, defending, and adaptation.

Parental coping with their child's death

Abstract The impact of the death of 19 children form malignancy on subsequent patterns of parental coping was evaluated in a retrospective study of 33 Dutch parents, who had been bereaved for 19 months on average. Parents who had lost older children were compared with those who had lost younger ones on the Utrecht Coping List, which has been compared with a Dutch norm group. Coping styles of the bereaved parents differed significantly from those of the norm group. These differences were associated with the poorer mental health of the bereaved group as a whole. Parents of older children coped less well than those of younger ones.

Analysing the Data of Practice

Practitioners are engaged in the process of data analysis all of the time. They interpret and assign meaning to all kinds of data from a wide range of sources: what they read, what they see, what they hear, what they are told, what they themselves think and feel. In this chapter we explore ways in which practitioners may become more aware, more explicit and more rigorous about these processes.

The Practitioner—Evaluator

Unlike aspects of practice covered in preceding chapters — problem formulation, engagement with subjects, analysis — evaluation is invariably informed by research methodologies. Research and evaluation go together. In this chapter we develop a model which moves responsibility for evaluation from the external ‘expert’ or the top-down manager to the practitioner and her team.

A Methodology for the Research-minded Practitioner

This chapter serves as a bridge between the first three chapters, which have been concerned with broad general themes and theoretical issues in research and practice, and the following chapters which focus on stages of the practice process: formulating the issues and preparation, groundwork and access; engaging with subjects to generate data; analysing practice data; and evaluating practice. Our intention now is to begin to develop a methodology for research-minded practice. We consider in this chapter particular aspects of research methodology, particularly those of participatory research, that may usefully inform the practice methodology of the researchminded practitioner.

The Purposes and Values of Research

Social work practice is, at any one time, a reflection of a particular set of assumptions about the causation of personal and social problems and the most effective responses to these. It relates to theories of the way society operates and tests those theories by acting on them (Kingsley, 1985). In Chapter 2, we explored theoretical perspectives on the ways in which subjective understandings of the world are shaped through experience and social context. Research has often felt irrelevant to the social work world because it has not allowed for subjectivity.

Epistemology and Theory in Social Work

Research is a publicly accountable activity. As such it contrasts with ‘intuition’, with taken-for-granted assumptions that remain private and implicit, and with ‘common sense’. Practitioners who are research-minded seriously appraise their understandings of the world. They consider how these are shaped through personal experience in specific historical, social and economic contexts. They reflect on the way these understandings relate to their practice. This requires that practitioners are clear and open about the theories they bring into play.

Formulating the Issues in Research-minded Practice

Problem-definition and assessment is not a simple objective measure but a complex process which involves values, principles, agency policies and procedures, the current legal position and the perspectives of social workers and their managers. Similar situations may or may not lead a client to seek help, a social worker to open a case file, a court to make an order. (Hardiker, Exton and Barker, 1989: 112)

Engaging with Subjects to Generate Data

I am looking for something. Much of it is hidden and hard to find. Much of it is complex and slippery; once found it is hard to hold. I am looking for that elusive quality called experience. But how am I to find it? (O’Hagan, 1986: 2)