Establishing Evidence for Strengths-Based Interventions? Reflections from Social Work's Research Conference

I recently attended the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) annual conference in San Francisco. As a new assistant professor developing a research agenda focused on social work practice with children and families from a strengths perspective, I was anxious to attend sessions presenting research regarding strengths-based interventions. When I received the conference schedule, I reviewed titles of presentations, ready with my highlighter pen to identify any topic related to research informing strengths-based practice. As I reviewed almost 300 titles of conference presentations, I was surprised to find only two sessions contained the term "strengths" in the title. I then reviewed poster sessions to discover that not one poster session referred specifically to "the strengths perspective" or "strengths-based" in the title. I felt a bit concerned that more titles did not reflect research regarding strengths-based practice. Understanding that the strengths perspective is a paradigm based on principles addressing a variety of constructs, I expanded my search to look for titles using other terms that may reflect strengths-based principles without actually using "strengths" in the title. I looked for words alluding to the concept of strengths such as "assets" and "protective factors." I then searched for concepts that describe processes identified within the strengths perspective such as "resilience" and "coping." Finally, I also looked for terms reflecting specific strengths previously identified in the literature such as "social support," "appraisal," "meaning making," and "spirituality." As I expanded my search in these ways, I did find an increase in the number of sessions related to this topic. Specifically, out of the 359 sessions reviewed, 47 presentations or posters did refer to these concepts in their abstracts, suggesting just over 10 percent of the presentations may represent research that could inform strengths-based practice even if this connection was not directly stated. As I reviewed these 47 in greater detail, I discovered that 18 of the sessions explored the protective factor of social support specifically, whereas 15 tested more expansive models of risk and protection. Six of the abstracts considered the strength of spirituality, and another six looked at a variety of other specific protective factors. Only two of the abstracts I reviewed presented research evaluating the effectiveness of strengths-based intervention. As I returned from this trip, I reflected on the meaning of this experience. I wondered, does a dearth of sessions directly asserting their connection to the strengths perspective suggest this paradigm is losing emphasis in social work? Do SSWR reviewers not value abstracts submitted regarding research based on the strengths perspective? Or, are we not conducting the kind of rigorous research expected at social work's top research conference that informs this paradigm? These hypotheses have personal implications for a young researcher seeking to build a research agenda on this paradigm. More significantly, these questions also have implications for our field. What does it mean for social work that we are presenting theoretical material regarding strengths-based principles consistently in the classroom if there is limited current evidence to support its application? As a sincere advocate of the principles of the strengths perspective, even making the previous statement is difficult for me. Prior to seeking my PhD, I was a social work practitioner working with children and families for over 10 years. I support strengths-based practice because I saw these principles work in practice (Lietz, 2004, 2007a). When I moved from a practitioner to a clinical supervisor, I applied these ideas by creating a model of strengths-based supervision and again, my own observations suggested this was a useful strategy. When I moved from practice to research, I conducted research to test and explore the construct of resilience for high-risk families. …