Epistemology in Qualitative Social Work Research: A Review of Published Articles, 2008-2010

Contents: Introduction Part I Perspectives on Social Work Research: Cutting edge issues in social work research Is social work distinctive? Ways of knowing in social work Rereading The Jack Roller: hidden histories in sociology and social work William J. Reid: an appreciation. Part II Evaluation: Social work and the human services Evidence from qualitative evaluation Seeing the trees for the wood: the politics of evaluating in practice Evaluation for a learning organization? Part III Qualitative Research: Qualitative social work: a room with a view Qualitative research and outcomes in health, social work and education Ethics and the practice of qualitative research Constructing causal accounts in social work The consequences of qualitative social work research Unbroken voices: children, young people and qualitative methods. Part IV Research, Theory and Practice: The quality of mercy: the management of quality in the personal social services Game plans, buzzes and sheer luck: doing well in social work Practitioner evaluation at work Evaluating in practice Culture and the indigenisation of quality in Third World social research. Part V Service Users and Research: Consumer opinion and social policy: a research review Consumer evaluations of the personal social services Engaging the user: participation, empowerment and the rhetoric of quality Just inquiry? Research and evaluation for service users Users and practitioners' research Indexes.

Previous articleNext article FreeThe Life and Career of Matthew O. HowardJeffrey M. JensonJeffrey M. JensonUniversity of Denver Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreMatthew O. HowardView Large ImageDownload PowerPointOn December 15, 2018, social work and the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research (JSSWR) lost one of its most prolific scholars, outstanding teachers, and thoughtful mentors in recent memory. Matthew O. Howard, PhD—the Frank A. Daniels Distinguished Professor of Human Services Policy Information and associate dean for doctoral education in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—passed away following a lengthy hospitalization. As an associate editor for JSSWR, Matthew had a significant impact on improving the quality and influence of the journal. He will be sorely missed by our editorial team.Matthew was a consummate scholar who possessed a singular ability to understand and conceptualize social problems of all types. His research contributed greatly to existing knowledge of the etiology, prevention, and treatment of substance abuse, alcohol dependence, and mental health disorders. And, Matthew’s provocative articles assessing the state of social work education, practice, and research set forth ideas that will affect the trajectory of social work for years to come. His passion for knowledge—conveyed quietly and effectively to countless graduate students—was felt deeply by the many lives he touched over the course of an academic career that included appointments in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington, the Department of Psychiatry at the Oregon Health Sciences University, the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, the School of Social Work and the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.Matthew’s training in social work coincided with my own enrollment in the University of Washington School of Social Work doctoral program in 1984. Matthew and I became immediate and close friends during our graduate studies in Seattle, and we spent hours discussing social work, class assignments, and the research projects we worked on as doctoral students. Many of these conversations occurred in an alley coffee shop in Seattle’s University District, just a stone’s throw from the School of Social Work. Known by the employees as “Matt and Jeff,” we were treated as regulars who would sit at our customary window table for what was likely far too long. It was a time of great intellectual pursuit, and I had found the perfect colleague and friend with whom to share ideas and discuss future plans. It was the beginning of a personal friendship and professional relationship that lasted 34 years.Matthew entered doctoral education with a well-developed interest in understanding the etiology of alcohol and other substance use disorders. Over the nearly four decades that followed, he devoted his career to conducting basic and applied research aimed at ameliorating substance abuse dependence and co-occurring problems associated with alcohol and drug abuse. He became particularly well known for his basic research and intervention studies addressing the vexing problem of inhalant abuse (e.g., Howard, Balster, Cottler, Wu, & Vaughn, 2008; Howard, Bowen, Garland, Perron, & Vaughn, 2011; Howard & Jenson, 1999b). Matthew’s innovative and rigorous research in this area led to three grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and to widespread recognition as one of the world’s foremost experts on inhalant abuse. In recent years, Matthew extended his work to testing mindfulness-oriented interventions for people with chronic pain and opioid misuse. His coinvestigator in much of this work was Eric Garland, professor and associate dean for research in the University of Utah College of Social Work. Eric, a former student of Matthew’s at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, describes some of the important lessons he learned under Matthew’s tutelage in an accompanying article in this issue (Garland, 2019).Matthew also made significant contributions to social work education and research. In the Aaron Rosen Lecture at the 2015 Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research, Matthew traced key developments in social work during the past 30 years and reflected on a vision of the field that stretched to 2044—30 years into the future (Howard & Garland, 2015). The ideas he shared in this lecture have provided a useful framework for assessing the relatively recent history of social work and addressing the challenges in educating master’s-level practitioners and doctoral students in the future. Matthew delivered a similarly thought-provoking lecture on the current state and future of social work doctoral education at the 2016 Annual Conference of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education. Ideas presented in his lectures were coupled with action. One such example is illustrated by Matthew’s early development of a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill doctoral-level course on conducting systematic reviews. Students in this class often produced publishable papers as a result of Matthew’s fastidious attention to breadth and quality. In earlier work at the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, Matthew and colleagues advanced the idea of evidence-based practice as a paradigm for training MSW social work practitioners (Howard, McMillen, & Pollio, 2003). Enola Proctor, the Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor in the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, was a colleague of Matthew’s at the time. She remembers Matthew as… a brilliant scholar and dear person. Highly regarded for his excellence in the classroom at the Brown School, he was demanding yet was a frequent winner of student-elected teaching awards. Matthew used his seemingly boundless energy to better the fields of addiction research and social work practice. He had my highest respect and unending affection. His passing is a tremendous loss to our field and community of scholars [and] saddens me deeply. (E. Proctor, personal communication, January 9, 2019)In 1999, Matthew and I had the good fortune to guest edit a special issue of Research on Social Work Practice that explored the utility of clinical practice guidelines for social work practice (Howard & Jenson, 1999a). Collectively, Matthew’s lectures and published papers assessing the state of social work education and practice stimulated debate and produced tangible curricula changes in schools across the country.A prolific writer, Matthew published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers in his career. His written work also included 40 book reviews, editorials, and government reports. Matthew’s h-index of 55 and nearly 9,000 citations of his work to date illustrate just how much his scholarship was valued by colleagues. His written contributions will be recognized and used by practitioners, policymakers, and researchers for decades to come.Matthew was a fellow and a board member of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and a fellow of the Society for Social Work and Research. A proponent of interdisciplinary work, he also was a faculty research fellow in the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the time of his passing. Matthew’s devotion to empirical research and scholarship is widely recognized. However, what may be most impressive about Matthew’s career is the recognition he received as both a scholar and a teacher. He was awarded eight outstanding teaching and mentoring awards from students and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two of Matthew’s doctoral students at North Carolina (Eric Garland, University of Utah; and Carrie Pettus-Davis, Florida State University) received Doctoral Fellow Awards from the Society for Social Work and Research. Matthew connected with his students by combining high scientific standards with a compassionate approach to helping people succeed. He was soft-spoken, but his ideas and words carried great weight and influence.Matthew’s service to the fields of social work and addiction was also exemplary. He reviewed manuscripts for more than 60 different academic journals in his career. He was on the editorial boards of more than 50 journals—including serving a JSSWR associate editor for the past several years—and he previously served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Social Service Research, Social Work Research, and the Journal of Addictive Diseases. Matthew also was vice president and served on the Society for Social Work and Research Board of Directors from 2005 to 2008.The task of summarizing the life and career of a prolific and impactful scholar, teacher, and mentor like Matthew is daunting. Mark Fraser, professor emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the founding editor of JSSWR, was a longtime friend, collaborator, and colleague. Reflecting on Matthew’s career, he recalls,As a scholar and a teacher, Matthew was eloquent and encyclopedic. Students flocked to his classes. A gentle spirit who treasured collaboration with others, his greatest joys came in exploring new ideas and reading recent research. In the profession as a thought leader, Matthew was a tour de force. At once, he was creative, insightful, sensitive, critical, and thorough. Matthew was—quite simply—incomparable. (M. Fraser, personal communication, January 8, 2019)Tangible accomplishments like those summarized here do not tell the complete story of a person. Matthew had an uncanny ability to effectively express his strong personal beliefs and ethical values in everyday interactions with friends and colleagues. He had a deep interest in applying the lessons gained from his own empirical work to promote fairness and equity for all people. Matthew’s invaluable input and feedback to students and colleagues about their ideas, papers, or projects came with great civility and kindness. He was an insatiable reader whose knowledge extended to topics well beyond social work or the addictions. In this sense, one could discuss a wide range of topics with Matthew with the preordained understanding that he had very likely already read much of what had been written on the topic. Matthew’s longstanding practice of underscoring written text with yellow highlighters was applied to thousands of empirical and conceptual articles and manuscripts during his career.On a personal level, Matthew enjoyed taking walks, listening to music, and reading novels and poetry. His wry sense of humor often left many of his closest friends and colleagues writhing in laughter. I was among them.JSSWR is proud to count Matthew as one of its most influential associate editors and contributors. His place as an important teacher and scholar in social work education and research is secure. Matthew’s many contributions will be discovered anew by emerging scholars for decades to come. His presence in social work and the broad field of the addictions will be missed by us all.NotesJeffrey M. Jenson, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and the Phillip D. & Eleanor G. Winn Endowed Professor Children and Youth at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work.Correspondence regarding this article should be directed to Jeffrey M. Jenson, University of Denver, 2148 S. High St., Denver, CO 80208 or via e-mail to [email protected]ReferencesGarland, E. L. (2019). Standing on the shoulders of giants: Matthew O. Howard as a mentor and his influence on the science of mindfulness as a treatment for addiction. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. Advance online publication. doi:10.1086/702654First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O. (2016, March 31). Hot topics in doctoral education. Presentation at the 2016 Annual Conference of the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education, Chapel Hill, NC.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., Balster, R., Cottler, L. B., Wu, L., & Vaughn, M. G. (2008). Inhalant use among incarcerated adolescents: Prevalence, characteristics, and predictors of use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 93, 197–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2007.08.023First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., Bowen, S., Garland, E. L., Perron, B. E., & Vaughn, M. G. (2011). Inhalant use and inhalant use disorders in the United States. Addiction Science & Clinical Practice, 6, 18–31.First citation in articleGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Garland, E. L. (2015). Social work research: 2044. Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research, 6, 173–200. https://doi.org/10.1086/681099First citation in articleLinkGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Jenson, J. M. (1999a). Clinical practice guidelines: Should social work develop them? Research on Social Work Practice, 9, 283–301. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973159900900302First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., & Jenson, J. M. (1999b). Inhalant use among antisocial youth: Prevalence and correlates. Addictive Behaviors, 24, 59–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0306-4603(98)00039-2First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle ScholarHoward, M. O., McMillen, J. C., & Pollio, D. (2003). Teaching evidence-based practice: Toward a new paradigm for social work education. Research on Social Work Practice, 13, 234–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049731502250404First citation in articleCrossrefGoogle Scholar Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research Volume 10, Number 1Spring 2019 Published for the Society for Social Work and Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/702653HistoryPublished online February 04, 2019 © 2019 by the Society for Social Work and Research. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Digital features like virtual reality have hardly been used in the framework of data collection in qualitative social work research. Virtual reality holds specific promise because it allows the immersion of participants in a situation and has the potential to strengthen the ecological validity of data. In this light, we examined the use of a virtual reality serious game in qualitative in-person interviews in the framework of a prevention-oriented HIV social research project. We designed and developed an immersive virtual reality serious game, and integrated it into 24 problem-centred in-person interviews. The integration was feasible, and the virtual reality serious game was well accepted. It prompted participants to elaborate their lived experiences more extensively and in depth. Participants subsequently recalled episodes they had not mentioned before, complemented their narratives and brought up new topics. The atmosphere became less formal, and participants were even more communicative. The use of virtual reality seems to have the potential to open up new perspectives, broaden epistemic possibilities and complement the qualitative methods used to investigate, in particular, verbal and non-verbal communication and interaction processes. From an ethical perspective, the use of virtual reality should be well reflected upon regarding possible after-effects for the participants.

PART ONE: THE SOCIAL WORK AGENDA FOR QUALITATIVE RESEARCH The Social Work Context for Qualitative Research A Review of Qualitative Research in Social Work PART TWO: EXEMPLIFYING QUALITATIVE SOCIAL WORK RESEARCH Caught Not Taught - Tom Hall Ethnographic Research at a Young People's Accomodation Project Interviewing Interviewers and Knowing about Knowledge - Jonathan Scourfield Personla Troubles as Social Issues - Catherine Kohler Riessman A Narrative of Infertility in Context 'People Listened to What We Had to Say' - Elizabeth Whitmore Reflections on an Emancipatory Qualitative Evaluation Auto-Ethnography as Reflexive Inquiry - Sue White Teh Research Act as Self-Surveillance Indentifying Expert Social Work - Jan Fook Qualitative Practitioner Research PART THREE: QUALITATIVE WORK IN SOCIAL WORK Fieldwork Choices in Context - Ian F Shaw and Nick G Gould Qualitative Research and Professional Practice Inquiry and Action Qualitative Research and Professional Practice The Consequences of Qualitative Social Work Research

Greetings to readers as we start a new year for Qualitative Social Work. Last year saw an increase in papers to the Journal and as our readership continues to grow, the value of qualitative research for social work is confirmed. However, there is no room for complacency and if we are to ensure that the Journal continues to thrive, it is important to remain abreast of changes in the world of qualitative research and social research more generally. So, this brings me to consider the issue of innovation in this new year editorial. For readers familiar with writing or reviewing grant applications, claims by academics that their work is novel or innovative are all very familiar. As Taylor and Coffey described in 2009, pressures stemming from funding councils and publishers encourage academics to state and indeed over-state the cutting edge nature of their work. Writing in 2015, it seems that claims to innovation are now endemic and if we examine the mission of the UK’s major social science research funding council – the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) – the word innovation is never far from the Council’s funding calls, strategy statements or impact case studies. In the Council’s research funding guide, applicants must pay attention to impact, innovation and interdisciplinarity. The Council’s conceptualisation of innovation is broad, to include: ‘innovative or even untested methods’, through to research which challenges ‘existing paradigms in respect of research ethics’ (ESRC, 2015). So what exactly is meant by innovation and to what extent is new invention better than old? In response to the latter question, critics differ in their opinion. For example, there are those who consider that innovative methods simply represent the latest fads, leaving unresolved the long-standing challenges in qualitative research (Travers, 2009). The problem of fad is that where we fetishise the novel we may inadvertently recast tried and tested methodologies as dated, or at worse obsolete. Traditional ethnography and conventional methods of qualitative interviewing have been so vital to our understanding of the social world, we must resist casting such methods as old hat (Wiles et al., 2011). Critics have also argued that claims to innovation are frequently overstated and can amount to little more than Qualitative Social Work 2016, Vol. 15(1) 3–10 ! The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1473325015619822 qsw.sagepub.com

This article reports a study assessing the contribution of current social work journal publications to a cumulative body of research that is capable of informing interventions. Thirteen journals published from 1993 to mid-1997 were reviewed. Analysis was guided by the view that the focus and design of studies should correspond to and supply the knowledge needed to perform different practice tasks. Accordingly, journal research articles were classified by their potential contribution to practice decisions requiring descriptive, explanatory, or control knowledge. Research aiming at control knowledge, informing the selection and implementation of interventions, was further evaluated by whether the interventions and outcomes studied were sufficiently specified to permit reliable research replication and application in practice. Very few of the published articles were found to report research on interventions, and even fewer used designs that enable replication. Factors affecting the rate and quality of research and interventions are also discussed. Key words: functions of knowledge; intervention research; knowledge for practice; research design; research purpose Social work has long been concerned with strengthening the extent to which its research is capable of informing and guiding practice (see Greenwood, 1957; Kadushin, 1959; Kane, 1982). Over the years increasing attention has been directed toward this purpose. This attention resulted in the founding in the 1970s of the first two journals dedicated to publishing research (Social Work Research & Abstracts and the Journal of Social Service Research) and the founding about 20 years later of a journal dedicated to research on practice (Research on Social Work Practice). These advances notwithstanding, concern persists that social work researchers are not meeting the needs of practitioners. Such concern was reflected in the convening of a symposium in 1996 on psychosocial intervention research, cosponsored by the Institute for the Advancement of Social Work Research and the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research at the National Institutes of Health, as well as in the publication of a special issue on intervention research in the journal Social Work Research (September 1997). Emanating from similar concerns, this article reviews current publications in social work and assesses their potential in contributing to a body of knowledge of effective interventions. This review is based on the premise that social work practice must adhere to and be guided by effectiveness criteria. That is, interventions should be selected and used on the basis of their empirically demonstrated effectiveness. Because journal publications are a major vehicle for accumulating and disseminating professional knowledge, they constitute a primary source of guidance for practice. Accordingly, we examined the current research published in social work journals in relation to its potential for contributing to effective practice. PURPOSE OF PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE The premise that intervention should be based on relevant and valid knowledge is at the core of professional practice. Rosen (1978, 1996) has conceptualized the knowledge needs of practice as related to the purposes for which knowledge is used and its function in practice. Three types of knowledge were distinguished: descriptive, explanatory, and control. Descriptive knowledge guides practitioners in classifying phenomena they encounter into meaningful conceptual categories. Often it is used by practitioners in deciding whether and to what extent a particular manifestation or event should be of concern-that is, considered a problem. Descriptive knowledge includes information on the characteristics, indicators, or incidences of phenomena of professional concern (for example, poverty, child abuse, maladaptive behavior, mental disorders, and community violence). Descriptive knowledge, in articulation with its values, also helps to formulate social work's objectives (Rosen, 1978), informs policy decisions about which services are needed by which client groups, and aids practitioners in assessing and classifying clients and problems into professionally meaningful categories. …

Qualitative research grounded in a social constructionist epistemology troubles the assumption, integral in positivist research, that a researcher can be neutral and apolitical. In fact, many scholars are drawn to constructionist epistemologies because they situate the research process as a site of ontological resistance and social change. This essay explores the politics of voice and representation in anti-oppressive qualitative research. Using an example from one author's research on stigma management among formerly incarcerated women, and the particularly pernicious stigma women faced if they had engaged in sex work, we detail the benefits and pitfalls of either re-presenting research participants in their exact words or changing participants' words, a process we refer to as re-languaging. Drawing upon philosophical and social scientific scholarship on the "crisis of representation" in qualitative research and recent scholarship and news articles about human sex trafficking, we underscore the powerful political effects of language. We argue that researchers' choices about language are neither inherently liberatory nor oppressive, but they are always political. We call for a more reflexive scholarly dialog on voice in qualitative social work research and press scholars to explicitly engage the question of whom and what we represent when we claim to represent marginalized others.

Qualitative research methods are advancing from individual analysis levels to dyadic and above to present multiple facets of reality, coinciding well with micro (individual), mezzo (family and groups) and macro (communities and society) levels in social work (SW) practices. Complex units (CU) comprise two groups with several members in each group, with each CU member having a perspective on the studied phenomenon; some perspectives are in congruence, others not. However, methodological approaches to the analysis of CUs are lacking. Based on the naturalistic–constructivist paradigm, this methodological article aims to present a Complex Unit Interviews Analysis (CUIA) approach that can be used in qualitative SW research. It includes a four-phase circular procedure: Phase 1—full analysis (i) familiarisation, (ii) coding, (iii) identifying themes; Phase 2—selective analysis of how a theme plays out in a CU (i) vertical analysis (across interviews within each CU group) and (ii) horizontal analysis (between groups of a CU); Phase 3—refining themes by analysis across CUs; Phase 4—conducting Phase 2 and Phase 3 for each theme identified in Phase 1. CUIA is illustrated using a family study case that presents multiple facets of a phenomenon’s reality by combining individual perspectives to form a CU perspective within SW and familial contexts.

The list of social, psychological, economic, and environmental challenges requiring social work research and practice responsiveness is substantial. Conducting high-quality cultural responsive research to positively affect the social, psychological, economic, and environmental entries on the social work research to-do list is essential. On this wide-ranging list are two areas where social work research should place a stronger focus for future research. Racial inequality and poverty are serious issues in this country and require a stronger emphasis from social work research. Race and income are often included as demographic measure in research as we study other social problems. Research on racial disparities and racial differences are quite prominent in social work (Williams, 2013). Researchers have documented that when compared with white Americans, racial minorities have worse outcomes in education, income, health, behavioral health, delinquency, substance abuse, disabilities, criminal justice, safety, and chronic diseases (Auslander, Thompson, Dreitzer, White, & Santiago, 1997; Cummings, Ponce, & Mays, 2010; Hardaway, & McLoyd, 2009; Hirschl & Rank, 2010; Kington & Smith, 1997; Nguyen, Ho, & Williams, 2011; Olshansky et al., 2012; Sampson & Lauritsen, 1997; Williams et al., 2007). What we have not documented is why race is a primary predictor of these differences and disparities. Studies published in social work journals on the meaning and construction of race, racism, and race relations are rare. Developing a research literature in social work on race, racism, and race relations will reinforce our knowledge about the well-being of a significant population served by social work practitioners. Race and historical and structural racism are key factors underpinning many of the differences and disparities for African American children, families, and individuals. Research needs to examine the true causes behind these differences and disparities and move beyond just using race as a predictor. We need to understand the complexities of racial identities and the impact of structural and historical racism on the life trajectory of African Americans.

Focus groups, originally used in fields such as marketing and consumer research, are rapidly gaining popularity as a research methodology in the social sciences. It is interesting to note that most of the scholarly work on focus groups continues to come from business rather than the social sciences. Few researchers have discussed the differing purposes and goals in social science and consumer research (Ospina, 1994; Moore, 1996). Furthermore, the literature on focus group research rarely utilizes social work knowledge of group dynamics or group facilitation skills. Rather, the literature on focus groups tends to give guidelines for leading groups, telling focus group facilitators what to do and what not to do in leading such groups. We believe that these guidelines, while generally helpful, can lead to rigidity on the part of focus group leaders. We suggest that, in social work research, focus group facilitators should use their knowledge of group dynamics and the values of individualization and empathy to modify focus group rules where appropriate. This paper describes part of a qualitative study of client/worker relationships in residential mental health settings. During the course of this research, group work principles came into conflict, at times, with recommended guidelines for focus group leaders. The paper illustrates how insights gleaned from group work theory and practice can enable a researcher to break focus group rules responsibly, thus bringing greater depth to the data gathered and allowing the researcher to be more sensitive to the needs of focus group participants.

This paper explores issues of reflexivity and knowledge production when cisgender researchers conduct social work research, using feminist narrative methods, to advance understanding about trans and non-binary people’s identities and experiences. Cisgender (or ‘cis’) refers to people who identify with the gender identity assigned to them at birth. The paper examines cis identity, privilege and positionality arguing for a reflexive engagement of the ways in which these influence ethical decision-making and research praxis. In this way, we speak to existing critiques that suggest that only trans and non-binary people should research their own experiences and identities. To address the neglect of gender diversity in education for social work practice and research, we propose that doing social work research with trans and non-binary communities requires cis researchers to adopt critical ethical reflexivity (CER) to scrutinise the impact of gender normativity and its effects in knowledge production for social work.

New Feminist Approaches to Social Science Methodologies: An Introduction

As a methodological proposal, this article proposes an approach to interview analysis that connects the content of interview data with (1) the immediate context of the interview, (2) the way context emerges and changes during an interview, (3) the relationship between the interviewee, the interviewer, and other less immediate parties who elicit and evaluate what said, and (4) the cultural conventions that shape what counts as a meaningful speech in the first place. The article continues on to delineate the importance of accounting for (5) the relationship of the interview to previous occasions of speaking, and (6) the relevant stakes of speaking and interests of speakers. The potential import of each principle is illustrated in reference to methodological challenges encountered during an ethnographic study of an intensive outpatient drug treatment program, a multi-method evaluation of the same program, and relevant practice experiences. In conclusion, the paper discusses how to make the most of data collected in ‘interview intensive’ (Padgett, 2008) qualitative social work research.

Interpretivism is a research paradigm that is associated with qualitative research.A tradition of Interpretivism can be linked to the ethnographies of non-western peoples in the 19th century and continues to be a popular way to explain human behaviour and social phenomenon today.The interpretivist view invites the researcher to investigate meaning behind the understanding of human behaviour, interactions and society.This involves the researcher attempting to develop an in-depth subjective understanding of people's lives.The difference between the natural sciences and social sciences is that the natural sciences requires the researcher to observe and interpret natural processes but the social sciences requires the researcher to observe a phenomenon and understand the interpretations that individuals have already made.Social work research aims to explain human behavior and social phenomenon and not to focus on isolating and objectively measuring variables or on developing generalizations.Social work research requires a focus on gaining an empathic understanding of an individual's feelings and the meaning that they give to everyday life with the goal to gaining greater understanding of the individual's behavior.For this reason, interpretive research is well suited to social work research.In this introductory paper, the authors present the validity of interpretive research and the value of using it in social work research.

The Coming of Age for Qualitative Research: Embracing the Diversity of Qualitative Methods