The Practice-Research Nexus in Social Work: Problems and Prospects.

The article focuses on an essay related to research in social work. From the days of scientific charity, the profession has struggled to find a comfortable, practical, and effective method of using systematic inquiry to develop, direct, improve, and evaluate practice. Working in part from adaptations of material published earlier and adding considerable new commentary, the authors succeed in offering a balanced and thoughtful, if somewhat narrower, appraisal of the more fulsome treatment of "science and social work" that the title so tantalizingly suggests. Following very useful introductory chapters on the historical and philosophical foundations for knowledge development in social work, the authors devote a chapter to each of the three strategies mentioned above, as well as to computer-assisted practice and research dissemination and utilization. The authors suggest that scientific practice might best be viewed as a perspective rather than as a theoretically neutral methodology and that efforts be taken to link practice evaluation with the broader aims of program evaluation.