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Knowing and Evidencing: Building a Research Base, Mapping and Modelling

This chapter considers policies and strategies underpinning social work research and evidence-based or evidence-informed practice. It also looks at how social workers say they generate knowledge or evidence and disseminate it to others; the dissemination of research is principally via publications such as journals, and through conferences. Professional and occupational groups may be expected to develop their own knowledge base(s) that will often be situated within specific epistemological frameworks, though the nature of such frameworks is often contested. This chapter explores how, within social work and social care, theoretical models and methods of gathering evidence from practice are explained and used. Social work, though emphasising the social, may be expected to draw upon an eclectic range of social and clinical sciences, with issues of disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity being identified as an important aspect of how knowledge of different kinds, although contested, can be applied to social work practice and research. The chapter also provides examples of how social workers have explained what evidence looks like to them and how they have attempted to work with evidence and research in their practice.