Building and consolidating knowledge for practice

The authors, reviewers, editors, and readers of Social Work Research share a commitment to increasing the store of knowledge about how to help effectively. The research articles on practice published in this journal and in others are the indispensable "building blocks" of professional knowledge. Of particular value are studies about what works, for whom, and under what conditions: I believe they hold the keys to advancing the effectiveness--and accordingly the professional stature--of social work. The publication of increasing numbers and quality of intervention studies is one of the most positive developments in recent years (see, for example, the special issue of Social Work Research, June 2001). Yet even as the quality and quantity of social work research grows, we have ample evidence that practitioners make limited use of that knowledge for day-to-day practice decisions (Rosen, 1994; Rosen, Proctor, Morrow-Howell, & Staudt, 1995). Most knowledge about interventions is published in the form of textbooks and journal articles. Practitioners who desire to use such research face daunting challenges. Articles on practice methods first must be identified, either by conducting electronic searches or by perusing personal journals or journals in agency or university collections. Further search is required to locate articles about interventions that seem substantively appropriate for the particular cases at hand. Then, drawing on knowledge of research methods, the reader must critically review and evaluate the effectiveness of potential interventions. Fortunately, social workers with Internet access and training for online searches can readily retrieve a wealth of treatment information, ranging from established practice guidelines (see, for example, www.guidelines.org) to discrete studies published in a wide range of journals. Yet for most social workers, time and resource constraints make it all but impossible to locate, assemble, integrate, critically assess, and apply the relevant research on a case-by-case basis. All this considered, criticizing practitioners for failing to use empirical evidence is unwarranted and counterproductive. Rather, in my view, the research community needs to better serve practitioners not only by conducting and publishing discrete studies, but also by undertaking systematic reviews and consolidation of findings, and then presenting the conclusions in user-friendly form. To stimulate and support such effort, this issue includes a call for papers for a special issue of Social Work Research devoted to the critical review and synthesis of practice research. We invite authors to focus on a manageable set of outcomes or outcome domains in a priority area of practice and to critically review published research on the interventions associated with the attainment of those outcomes. To enhance their usefulness to practitioners, critical review articles should address professionally important outcomes of intervention in a particular field, for a particular group, or for a particular problem or concern. Although the outcomes and interventions assessed must be relevant to social work practice, a wide range of relevant literature--including studies from other fields--can and should be reviewed. Reviews on a broad range of topics and ranging from micro to macro and prevention to intervention practice are welcome in Social Work Research. Review articles on outcomes pertinent to children and schools also are welcomed by the editorial board of Children & Schools, another journal committed to assembling and publishing reviews of best practices (Franklin, 2001). The annual meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research, scheduled for January 2002 in San Diego, California, will host a panel presenting six such reviews. I hope the confluence of these efforts will make more evident the strength of the evidence base for social work practice. The synthesis and consolidation of research evidence is a key step toward the development of practice guidelines (Proctor & Rosen, in press). …