Teaching Research and Practice Evaluation Skills to Graduate Social Work Students

• Published in: Research on social work practice Vol. 22; no. 6; pp. 714 - 718
• Main Authors: Wong, Stephen E., Vakharia, Sheila P.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.11.2012; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Design Preferences; Evaluation Criteria; Evaluation Research; Goals; Graduate Students; Intervention; Interventions; Portfolio Assessment; Postgraduate students; Professional practice; Professional practices; Professional training; Program Evaluation; Research Projects; Research Skills; Self report; Selfimprovement; Selfreport; Simulation; Skill Development; Skills; Social skills; Social Work; Social work education; Statistical Significance; Student Projects; Students; Teaching; Teaching Methods; Work Skills; teaching practice evaluation; graduate social work students; single-case designs; teaching program evaluation; single-subject designs; practice evaluation exercise; single-system designs
• ISSN: 1049-7315; 1552-7581
• DOI: 10.1177/1049731512451060

Objective: The authors examined outcomes of a graduate course on evaluating social work practice that required students to use published research, quantitative measures, and single-system designs in a simulated practice evaluation project. Method: Practice evaluation projects from a typical class were analyzed for the number of research references cited, type of client, goals or problems, measures, interventions, single-system designs, and outcomes. Results: More than half of the students conducted self-improvement projects monitored with self-report measures, and goals or problems selected and interventions applied varied widely. More than 80% of the projects were evaluated with simple AB designs, over 45% of which were associated with statistically significant improvements and an additional 43% showed gains that did not reach statistical significance. Conclusions: Results suggest that students can be taught techniques and skills needed to formulate interventions derived from published research and to evaluate effects of these interventions using single-system designs.