Social Work and Evaluation

As the National Association of Social Workers’ (NASW) says: “Social workers touch lives.” According to the Census Bureau and NASW, there are between 600,000 and 800,000 social workers in practice across our nation (Collins, 2009; Whitaker & Arrington, 2008). It is very likely that every American will be touched by our work somehow during the course of their lives, whether at a hospital discharge, through school guidance, involvement with our protection or advocacy duties, or through our research and teaching. We are a broad profession with a common set of ethics and values, grounded in empowerment, and social justice for marginalized populations.

With such a broad workforce comes broad mandates, and a responsibility to ensure that we are providing the best possible services with the most optimal use of resources. There are dozens of areas in which social workers function where federal oversight brings pressure to evaluate effectiveness and efficiency. With increased pressure on programs to evaluate outcomes, and expanded governmental interest in the topic, the issue of evaluation in social work has never been so topical. Indeed, in his 2012 budget, the Obama administration lays out clearly the need for evaluation of services. The Budget states:

The Administration is proposing new funding for 2012 for 19 evaluations that have the potential for strong study designs and that address important actionable questions or strengthen agency capacity to support such strong evaluations. These evaluations will assess, for example, the effectiveness of different strategies for improving college enrollment, persistence, and completion; capacity-building for the U.S. Agency for International Development to help make rigorous evaluation a more routine aspect of their international development assistance efforts; and an analysis of ways to make the Federal workforce more efficient. In addition, an inter-agency working group is promoting stronger evaluation across the Federal Government, and OMB is working with agencies to make information readily available online about all Federal evaluations that are planned or already underway. (Office of Management and Budget [OMB], 2012b, p. 28)

This clear call for evaluation across all government agencies is seen throughout the budget and its addendum documents. In fact, the budget proposal goes on to call for increased production of rigorous evidence and continuous evaluation of programs in education, science and technology development, military spending, counterterrorism efforts, programs for children with disabilities, and those who receive SSI, recovery act spending, food security, housing and urban redevelopment, nonprofit support, and even national service. On page 167, the document states that “the Budget also focuses national service resources in those areas where service can achieve the greatest results for communities, and invests in program evaluation to determine what forms of service are most effective.” The Analytical Perspectives addendum to the 2012 budget contains an explicit section on the perspective of evaluation by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), including issues of critical importance to social workers, such as measuring social indicators, and how cost–benefit analyses are to be applied to social service programs (OMB, 2012a). Whether we wish to engage in the discussion about it or not, evaluation of our work is here to stay.

The pressures on social work practice to demonstrate effectiveness and efficiency have continued to grow. In response to these pressures, there has been a growing interest in evidence-based practice and strategies for the evaluation of social work programs, as indicated by the growth in readership of Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) and similar scholarly journals, and memberships of the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) and the American Evaluation Association (AEA). Readers of RSWP are undoubtedly familiar with the SSWR and its contributions to social work scholarship. The AEA is an international professional association devoted to the application and exploration of evaluation in all its forms. With members around the globe and across all professions, the AEA is a source of vibrant discussion, information, resources, and policy analysis. The AEA’s mission is to improve evaluation practices and methods, increase evaluation use, promote evaluation as a profession, and support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action. AEA has approximately 6,800 members representing all states and territories of the United States and over 60 foreign countries. Membership is relatively inexpensive, and includes journal subscriptions to the American Journal of Evaluation, and New Directions in Evaluation, access to the community e-library, free membership to the online, archived, discussion forums (EvalTalk), and membership in Topical Interest Groups (TIGs). Membership is not required to join EvalTalk or the forums on social networking.

TIGs are a major component of the life of AEA members. Each TIG is defined around a special topic or interest. TIGs coordinate their efforts through AEA and participate actively in the annual conference by soliciting and reviewing proposals and developing topical strands for conference sessions. Members of AEA may join up to five TIGs as part of membership, and these range the gamut from groups centered around methodological approaches (such as, the Social Network Analysis TIG) to those organized around broader professional orientations (such as the New Evaluators TIG, or the Social Work TIG).

The Social Work TIG is focused on the particular experiences, needs, and pressures of evaluation in our profession. Created in 2001, the TIG provides a forum for scholarship, networking, and methodological support that is specific to our profession. At the present time, there are approximately 285 AEA members who belong to the TIG, and a small number of additional individuals who have joined the discussions on our online social forums, where membership to AEA is not required for participation. Although our focus is to improve evaluation practices, methods and use within social work, collaborations with other TIGs have generated an ongoing stream of topical scholarly work. At the last national conference, the Social Work TIG and the Human Services TIG collaborated to produce a presidential-strand panel titled “Values and Valuing in Evaluation.” This panel took on an important line of questioning: How do we decide whose interests are the most important in our evaluations? What responsibilities do we have to give voice to underrepresented populations, and to those who cannot speak for themselves? What is our responsibility to evaluate our programs for efficacy, effectiveness, and equity? Who decides which stakeholders’ contributions are valued? This is an area where social work is not only knowledgeable, but deeply relevant, and our profession represents a cornerstone in the upholding of our societal values and responsibilities to our citizens.

The overall purpose of the TIG is to provide a focal point for AEA members who are either social workers, social work academics or researchers, or evaluators of social work programs to:

Improve evaluation practices and methods within social work,

Increase evaluation use in social work practice,

Promote evaluation as a profession that has much to offer social workers,

Support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action, including social work practice,

Promote AEA among colleagues interested in the evaluation of social work practice and to encourage them to join AEA in order to develop the TIG’s purposes,

Promote resources for social workers to pursue evaluation research,

Improve teaching of evaluation in social work education, and improve resources for evaluation training for social workers.

The Social Work TIG is inclusive in promoting all evaluation research perspectives (e.g., empirical, interpretivist, pragmatist, realist, etc.) that help develop the effectiveness of social work practice.

Evaluation is a discipline in its own right; at the same time, it permeates human services professions. The development of social work practice evaluators helps not only to promote the AEA’s purpose of promoting evaluation as a profession but also to help social workers join this profession. There is a direct relationship between evaluation and the development of social work knowledge and practice, as well as the development of research questions. The demand for evidence-based practice, as well as our current standards of education, train new social workers to critically consider their treatment choices and determine whether what they are doing has good outcomes and demonstrates appropriate fit for the needs of the client. The Social Work TIG of the AEA is one group dedicated to helping develop these practices, and to promoting the overall contribution of social work in this regard. We welcome you to join us in our endeavors to promote rigorous evaluation, framed by our social work values and bolstered by our unique perspective in the larger frame of our society.

You can get more information about the AEA by visiting the website, at www.eval.org, and can learn more about the Social Work TIG by visiting our group website (http://comm.eval.org/eval/social_work/home/), finding our Facebook page (search for Social Work TIG of the AEA), joining our discussions on LinkedIn, or contacting the authors. The next annual conference will be in Minneapolis, MN, October 22–27, 2012, and the call for papers will be open soon for that event. We hope to see you there!