SCWK2006 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Research Question, Reflectance, Social Fact
12 May 2018
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SCWK2006 – Week 3
Chapter 2: Research Question
The impetus for research
• Needs or issues that confront us in the course of our work which prompt ideas for research/
personal experience
• Most researchers are more likely to be of a certain socio-economic status, warning of the
strong possibility of research continuing to be conducted by well-educates, middle-class
people on less educated, poorer people
Research questions for social work
• One approach is to locate unifying themes in the broader mission of the profession
o Social work has no unique subject matter or methodology
• Social work research is generally oriented around one (or more) of three strategies:
o Exploratory: aims to generate knowledge about a relatively under-researches or newly
emerging subject
• Helps define and map features
o Descriptive: illuminate the features and extent of the subject
• More detailed understanding
o Explanatory: develop explanations of a subject
• Investigate impacts
• Marlow: Two prime areas where questions surface in generalist social work
o Needs Assessments: likely to be exploratory or descriptive, assessing the incidence of a
particular social issue
o Evaluations: descriptive or explanatory, evaluate the process or the outcome
• McLaughlin: imperative that researchers who embrace an anti-oppressive commitment
consider whether the research question driving their research is one that will empower or
further oppress
Role of research questions
• Give direction and coherence, provide a framework, point to data that will be needed
• Research question provide a relatively constant reference point to help plan and navigate the
course
• Explanatory questions aim for specificity of the research question at the outset
• Exploratory require openness to what is encountered in the empirical world
Question setting
• Process of question setting is characterised by a movement between the general and the
specific
• Criteria's
o Feasibility: capable of being done
o Relevance: credibility the research would need to have in addressing concerns of the
profession and social work sector generally
o Researchable: potential to be answered
o Ethical
• Key elements
o Reflexivity: appreciate how we are positioned in relation to the research through a
variety of frames that account for personal worldviews
o Participation: agenda for research begin to unsettle an exercise of power which would
otherwise perpetuate oppressive practices
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Document Summary
Research questions for social work: one approach is to locate unifying themes in the broader mission of the profession, social work has no unique subject matter or methodology. Paradigms: way of describing, different ways of knowing, set of concepts, patterns, beliefs that influence what should be studied, how research should be done, how results should be interpreted, reflect changing values. Feature is the recognition that all researchers are part of communities of knowledge, whether associated with professions or discipline or wider social, cultural and political communities. See knowledge as a construction: assist in understanding the politics by which events or phenomena become social problems. Basic dimensions of paradigms: ontology, theories of being, of what exist, refers to the claims that a particular approach to social enquiry makes about the nature. Formal paradigms: positivism, emphasises explanations that are tested through empirical research on the real world that involves experiments.
