ABSTRACT

Professional guidelines for social workers in relation to research use in practice, present social workers as consumers, rather than producers of research evidence. This approach aligns with a growing emphasis on the use of evidence-based practice within social work. This paper reports on a small mixed methods study with a cohort of BA social work students (N = 38) with two aims: 1) to understand the experiences of students learning research at undergraduate level and 2) to explore how their learning and placement experiences interact and influence their development as ‘research-minded’ practitioners of the future. Descriptive statistics of the quantitative data and thematic analysis of focus groups are presented. Our findings support the existing literature relating to social work students attitudes to research, including feelings of anxiety and perceptions of difficulty, while also viewing it as important to their careers. We also found that within placement settings, students encounter negative, often dismissive views of research and experience little in the way of role-modelling of evidence-based practice. We consider these findings in light of the promotion of EBP in UK social work, and how this may influence our teaching of research and evidence use to future student cohorts.

摘要

社会工作者在实践中与研究使用相关的专业指南，将社会工作者呈现为消费者，而不是研究证据的生产者。这种方法与越来越强调在社会工作中使用循证实践相一致。本文报告了一项针对 BA 社会工作学生 (N = 38) 的小型混合方法研究，其目的有两个：1) 了解学生在本科阶段学习研究的经历和 2) 探索他们的学习和安置经历互动并影响他们作为未来“研究型”从业者的发展。提供了定量数据的描述性统计和焦点小组的主题分析。我们的研究结果支持与社会工作学生对研究的态度有关的现有文献，包括焦虑感和困难感，同时也认为这对他们的职业很重要。我们还发现，在安置环境中，学生会遇到消极的、通常不屑一顾的研究观点，并且在循证实践的角色建模方面经验很少。我们根据 EBP 在英国社会工作中的推广来考虑这些发现，以及这将如何影响我们对未来学生群体的研究和证据使用教学。