![]() Without specification, interventions cannot be taught. Such specification of interventions is essential to two professional responsibilities: professional education and demonstrating the effectiveness of the field’s interventions. Thus, in a series of papers, Rosen and I advocated that social work interventions be specified, clearly labeled, and operationally defined, measured, and tested. ![]() We recognized that gross descriptions of interventions obstruct professional training, preclude fidelity assessment, and prevent accurate tests of effectiveness. Moreover, interventions were not named, nor were their components clearly identified. 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. At that time, process and outcomes were jumbled and intertwined concepts. 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. What Interventions and Services Are Most Effective?Īnswering the question “What services are effective?” requires rigorous testing of clearly specified interventions. My work seeks to improve the quality of social work practice by pursuing answers to three questions: 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. 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. 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. Moreover, social work confronts these challenges as it is ethically bound to deliver high-quality services. Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for rigorous assessment and evaluation. 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. Click HERE to know what is DOI (Digital Object Identifier)? Click HERE to retrieve Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) for journal articles, books, and chapters.Social work addresses some of the most complex and intractable human and social problems: poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and child abuse. The accepted papers are published online within one week after the completion of all necessary publishing steps.Įach paper published in Journal of Sociology and Social Work is assigned a DOI ®number, which appears beneath the author's affiliation in the published paper. ![]() Readers can freely access or cite the article. It allows PDF version of manuscripts that have been peer reviewed and accepted, to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a final printed journal. The journal follows double-blind peer review process.Į-Publication First TM is a feature offered through our journal platform. The journal also publishes articles that promote, debate and analyze current themes and issues in social work theory, research, policy and practice. AJS strives to speak to the general sociological reader and is open to sociologically informed contributions from anthropologists, statisticians, economists, educators, historians, and political scientists. The journal welcomes research papers from all areas of sociology, with an emphasis on theory building and innovative methods. The journal remains a leading voice for analysis and research in the social sciences. Journal of Sociology and Social Work is a scholarly international journal in its fields.
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