Advocacy is central to the social work profession's commitment to social betterment and justice, yet much of what we know about it is based on conventional wisdom. We have little evidence on the effectiveness of interventions and even less on the costs and benefits of advocacy campaigns. This article discusses some of the conceptual and…

Police agencies across the country are struggling to respond to significant number of persons with serious mental illness, who are landing on their doorsteps with sometimes tragic consequences. Arguably, the most widely adopted approach, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, is a specialized police-based program designed to improve officers'…

As evidence-based practice is increasingly accepted in social work, the challenges associated with its actual implementation become more apparent and pressing. This article identifies implementation as a critical issue for research; implementation itself must be better understood if evidence-based practices are to be used and resultant…

One strategy for addressing the persistent challenge of advancing empirically based social work practice is to engage practitioners in the formulation of empirically developed practice guidelines. Although this approach is promising, there has been relatively little work to guide practitioners, and perhaps consequently, few examples of…

A complete and mindfully developed blueprint for implementing evidence-based practice (EBP) in social work should include a full complement of coordinated goals and strategies for all stakeholders, including future social workers. To this end, schools of social work should teach students to be lifelong learners; teach students what is currently…

This article presents propensity score matching as a method to implement randomized conditions to analyze service effects using nonexperimental data. Most social work research is challenged to implement randomized clinical trials, whereas administrative and survey data are often available and can provide valuable information about services…

Since its founding in 1994, the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) has grown dramatically, in large part because of its annual conference featuring the best in social work research. SSWR's growth has also given rise to an appreciation for greater diversity in methods. Although disparities in research infrastructure (and procurement of…