Research Methods for Social Work SW-7109

TheSocial Research in social work examines the scientific method applied to the understanding of behaviour, the recognition and posing of scientifically researchable questions, and the examination of different research designs. The course also covers the underlying assumptions, logic, and philosophy of research in the social sciences.  Students gain an understanding of qualitative and quantitative methods in social work research. This course also moves beyond a focus on how to do research to include critical reflection on methodological issues and viewpoints. The main objective of this course is to make the students develop a methodology of the research study, plan a suitable design, devise a data collection strategy and writing a proposal. purpose of this course is to develop students' understanding and skills in the approaches, techniques and challenges of conducting social work research and to enable students to be competent and discerning consumers of social science literature. The purpose of this course is to develop students' understanding and skills in the approaches, techniques and challenges of conducting social work research and to enable students to be competent and discerning consumers of social science literature.

 

  1. An Introduction to Scientific Inquiry in Social Work
  2. Philosophy and Theory in Social Work Research
    1. Postmodernism
    2. Contemporary Positivism
    3. Interpretivism
    4. Critical Social Science
    5. Comparing Deduction and Induction
    6. Use of Nomothetic and Idiographic Research in Social Work Practice
    7. Objectivity and Subjectivity in Scientific Inquiry
  3. The Ethics and Politics of Social Work Research
  4. Problem Formulation
    1. Introduction
    2. Purposes of Social Work Research
    3. Constructing Measurement Instruments
    4. Selecting Topics and Research Questions
    5. Literature Review
  5. Conceptualization and Operationalization
    1. Developing a Proper Hypothesis
    2. Differences between Hypotheses and Research Questions
    3. Types of Relationships between Variables
    4. Operational Definitions
    5. Conceptualization
  6. Measurement
    1. Common Sources of Measurement Error
    2. Reliability
    3. Validity
    4. Relationship between Reliability and Validity
  7. Constructing Measurement Instruments
    1. Guidelines for Asking Questions
    2. Questionnaire Construction
    3. Constructing Composite Measures
    4. Levels of Measurement
    5. Some Prominent Scaling Procedures
  8. Designs for Evaluating Programs and Practice
    1. Causal Inference and Experimental Designs
    2. Quasi-Experimental Designs
    3. Single-Case Evaluation Designs
    4. Program Evaluation
  9. Data-Collection Methods with Large Sources of Data
    1. Sampling
    2. Survey Research
    3. Analyzing Existing Data: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
      1. Secondary Analysis
      2. Content Analysis
      3. Historical and Comparative Analysis

 

  1. Qualitative Research Methods
    1. Prominent Qualitative Research Paradigms
  2. Qualitative Research: Specific Methods
    1. Qualitative Interviewing
    2. Life History
    3. Feminist Methods
    4. Focus Groups
    5. Recording Observations
  3. Qualitative Data Analysis
  4. Quantitative Data Analysis
  5. Inferential Data Analysis
  6. Writing Research Proposals and Reports

Text Book 

         Rubin, A., & Babbie, E. R. (2011). Research Methods for Social Work (7th ed.). Belmont, USA Brooks/Cole, Cengage   Learning.

Suggested Readings

Babbie, E. (2013). The Practice of Social Research (13th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Babbie, E. (2014). The Basics of Social Research (6th ed.). Belmont: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Bhattacherjee, A. (2012). Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices (2nd ed.). Florida: Creative Commons Attribution.

Course Material

Other Courses by Dr. Aaqib Shahzad Alvi