The emerging discourse about the science of social work has urged doctoral social work programs to reexamine assumptions about conducting research and responding to new expectations for scholarship. This article examines three promising models to guide scientific research in social work (evidence-based practice, team science, and multi- and…

Purpose: This research project aims to evaluate the potential effectiveness of a vocational recovery model promoting both vocational and personal recovery for young people with mental illness. Methods: In this study, a one group pre-posttest design was conducted, involving 37 young people with mental illness who received a vocational recovery…

Traditional approaches to disseminating research based programs and innovations for children and families, which rely on practitioners and policy makers to make sense of research on their own, have been found insufficient. There is growing interest in strategies that "make it happen" by actively building the capacity of service providers…

Professional social workers and other mental health providers have for many years been involved in delivering treatment and support services focused on the needs of adults with severe mental illnesses living in the community. While some models have evolved largely through practice experience, others have developed through research paradigms in…

Objective: This systematic review examines experimental studies that test the effectiveness of strategies intended to integrate empirically supported mental health interventions into routine care settings. Our goal was to characterize the state of the literature and to provide direction for future implementation studies. Method: A literature…

The field of social work does not currently have a widely adopted method for expediting innovations into micro- or macropractice. Although it is common in fields such as engineering and business to have formal processes for accelerating scientific advances into consumer markets, few comparable mechanisms exist in the social sciences or social…

Contemporary research models are becoming increasingly transdisciplinary (TD), multilevel, community-connected, and bent on expediting the movement of research to impact. This requires not only fresh thinking about the science of social work but an educational architecture that fosters both cross-disciplinary understanding of complex underlying…

Objective: This study assessed the effectiveness of mutual aid groups for high school students. Methods: A quasi-experimental design was applied to 242 adolescents, where every other adolescent was assigned to the intervention or the control condition. The study evaluated the influence of implementing mutual aid groups in decreasing perceived risk…

Evidence based practice (EBP) is reflected in social work publications, accreditation standards, research, and funding opportunities. However, implementing EBP in social work practice and education has proven challenging, highlighting the need for additional resources. This paper describes the Transdisciplinary Model of EBP, a model based on…

Objectives: The aim of this pilot study was to explore psychometric properties of two versions of the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment Inventory in a Swedish social service sample. Method: Social workers employed at 22 Swedish child protections agencies participated in the data collection. Both classic test theory approaches 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'…

Social work education has historically been grounded in professional practice but recent discussions have urged a reconsideration of social work as a science. Social work is progressively doing more intervention work, service systems research, implementation research, and translational research which are elevating research standards to new levels…

This article describes a 5-step model of intervention research. From lessons learned in our work, we develop an outline of core activities in designing and developing social programs. These include (a) develop problem and program theories; (b) design program materials and measures; (c) confirm and refine program components in efficacy tests; (d)…

In the past decade, the Israeli Ministry of Social Affairs has been engaged in an ongoing effort to change the capacity of social service organizations and social workers across the country to use and create knowledge in order to achieve the best outcomes for the people they serve. Although there is an ever-growing mandate in Israel to demonstrate…

Relatively little attention has been paid to the dimension of time in the design of social work interventions. Critical time intervention (CTI), an empirically supported psychosocial intervention intended to reduce the risk of homelessness by enhancing continuity of support for individuals with severe mental illness (SMI) during the transition…