The DSW to the Rescue? A Response to Feldman

Ron Feldman has performed a great service by providing us with a retrospective appraisal of the developments emerging since the 1991 NIMH Task Force Report on the State of Social Work Infrastructure. He is ideally positioned to do this since he was and is so intimately involved in promoting social work research over the past four decades. He has done this via his own immense contributions to social work research articles, chapters, and books, through his exemplary leadership as Dean and Professor of one our foremost social work programs (Columbia University), as being one of the founding Board Members of the Society for Social Work and Research, providing leadership within the St. Louis Group, and by delivering research mentoring for numerous doctoral students and faculty over the years. I will focus my response on one area he noted several times, his concern over the stagnant if not diminishing numbers of so-called research doctorates (RDs) being produced within social work. He mentions the emergence of the so-called practice doctorate in social work (PD). He repeatedly called for increasing the numbers of RDs but gave short shift to the potential of PDs toward contributing to the research-base of social work. I think it is a mistake to view RDs and PDs as uniquely distinctive forms of training with different goals. Older readers may recall that at one point the Doctor of Social Work (DSW) was a very common degree within our field, before it died out in the 1980s as those existing programs began offering the Ph.D. instead. Some transitioned programs even offered its DSW graduates new diplomas reading “Ph.D.,” in recognition that within the academy the Ph.D. held greater respect and currency. However, largely due to the initiative of Professor Ram Cnaan and other faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, that social work program revived the DSW degree, an initiative rapidly emulated by other schools so that now there are over 35 DSW programs in the United States (see https://www.gadesocialwork.org/AF_MemberDirectory.asp) as well as in Hong Kong, he United Kingdom, and Australia. Apart from enhancing the status of the profession, DSW programs are a low-cost approach to increase a university's number of “doctoral graduates,” an important metric in the arcane world of university rankings. Most DSW programs are part time and provide no free scholarships or tuition to their students, in contrast to social work Ph.D. programs. Many DSW degrees are offered online and are often taught by lower cost adjunct faculty.

It is worth noting that an empirical analysis comparing the curricula content of DSW and Ph.D. programs conducted in the early 1970s found that the two degrees then were very similar (Crowe & Kindelsperger, 1975), concluding “The results indicated a remarkable unanimity in focus on research and knowledge building” (p. 38). A contemporary replication analysis would be worthwhile. It is also worth noting that a good many exemplary DSW-trained academics of prior generations contributed significantly to social work research scholarship and infrastructure. For instance, Janet B. W. Williams, DSW, founded the Society for Social Work and Research, was co-editor of the important DSM-III (American Psychiatric Association, 1980), authored many intervention studies in the field of mental illness and pioneered in assessment scale development. Stuart Kirk, DSW, published important empirical papers critical of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Joel Fischer, DSW, published cogent critiques of the outcomes of social work practice; and Richard B. Stuart DSW, published seminal intervention research papers in important fields such as weight loss, couples therapy, and domestic violence.

More contemporary examples can be given of the new generation of Doctors of Social Work, as in the research contributions of Dr. Johnson Chun Sing Cheung, who received his DSW in 2016 from the Hong Kong Polytechnical University. He is now a Senior Lecturer (equivalent to a tenured Associate Professor) with the Department of Social Work and Social Administration at the University of Hong Kong. He has authored over 65 papers in scholarly social work and other disciplinary journals, serves on 12 Editorial Boards (mostly SSCI or ESCI outlets), and has provided over 700 blind peer reviews for journals. This outstanding record of research contributions would be matched by very few, if any, of his Ph.D. contemporaries. More modestly, but laudably, Mexican-American school social worker Annette Allison, Tulane DSW graduate, published a quasi-experimental outcome study of the outcomes following cognitive-behavioral group therapy services she provided to 23 Latino students in her own school (Allison & Ferrerira, 2017). This was her doctoral capstone project, therapy was delivered in Spanish, and this paper has already been cited a remarkable 30 times. Dr. Christopher Barrilleaux (2024), another Tulane DSW University graduate, published his own capstone project titled “Evaluating Covert Sensitization in the Treatment of Male Sex Addicts: Three Single Subject Studies.” These two latter examples are the epitome of excellent social work practice—the LCSW provided a research-supported intervention, they evaluated the outcomes of their own practice, as called for by our code of ethics, and they published the results in quality peer-reviewed journals, contributing to the knowledge base of both our practice and our science. Another Tulane DSW student, Dr. Harry Hunter (2024), published a paper on the transtheoretical model of behavior change, based upon a paper he wrote while a student in this program. These contributions of DSW researchers cover the spectrum of scientific endeavors—large-scale projects, small-scale group outcome studies, single-base studies, and theoretical contributions. Clearly DSW graduates can contribute much to social work science, and their growing numbers of graduates suggests this positive influence will continue to grow.

Currently, social work Ph.D. programs require the student complete what is called a doctoral dissertation, a lengthy treatise that is supposed to be an original contribution to knowledge in the social work and the behavioral sciences. A laudable few allow the Ph.D. student to fulfill the dissertation requirement via submitting or publishing one or more articles to professional journals, but this is rare. If we turn to the website of the current DSW program found at the University of Pennsylvania we read that their capstone project is actually called a dissertation (https://sp2.upenn.edu/program/doctorate-in-clinical-social-work/) and among the examples of the types of studies that might be used to fulfill this project is a randomized controlled outcome study (https://sp2.upenn.edu/dsw-student-handbook/)! Thus, there is no essential difference between this so-called PD (DSW) and the so-called RD (Ph.D.).

The idea that social workers who receive a Ph.D. will go on to have tenure-earning academic careers characterized by continuously publishing research publications is more aspirational than factual. As Feldman points out, only about half of our RD graduates go into academia, and of those that do, many serve in non-tenure earning lines as clinical or practice faculty. And the fact is that the number of research publications of social work Ph.D.s appears to be very low (Green et al., 1992). The impact factor (one benchmark of research productivity) of social work faculty is considerably below that of academics in related fields such as psychology and public health (Barner et al., 2014; Madison & Sundell, 2022; Pardeck et al., 1991; Thyer & Polk, 1997). And for many academics, publication productivity declines with age, as documented in the aptly named research paper titled All Downhill from the PhD (Thelwall & Fairclough, 2020). Social work Ph.D. programs are very expensive to mount, take an inordinate amount of time to complete, have high dropout rates, and often produce little bang for the buck, if the overarching goal is to produce productive researchers.

For the past 7 years, I have taught in the DSW program at Tulane University. As a Ph.D.-trained faculty member I was initially a trifle dubious about this newly emerging degree, but to my delight I found many positive features. The cohorts were much larger, with classes of 15–20 students, compared to the 4–5 students enrolled in Ph.D. courses I taught at the University of Georgia and Florida State University. The students were considerably more experienced, almost all were licensed social workers and they brought to our class discussion field-specific depth of knowledge and insights that enriched all of us participants. One was a social worker on death-row at a state penitentury (she worked there, she was not a prisoner!), another JD/MSW DSW student was assistant to the mayor of New Orleans; another was an ex-Catholic seminarian who engaged in private practice, focusing exclusively on the treatment of sex offenders and yet another was a current Tibetan Buddhist monk who emigrated to the United States, earned his LCSW, married an American woman and had several children! About half of each cohort was Black, with additional Hispanic and Asian students leavening the mixture. Talk about Diversity! The appearance of such students gladdened my heart during the first day of class in New Orleans as I knew their presence foretold good class discussions and mutual learning for all of us. When the term was over I was so enamored with this DSW program that I wrote a short paper extolling this vitues of this revived DSW degree as a way to enhance the numbers of doctoral-level social workers (Thyer, 2015a).

To put it simply, we need more doctoral-trained social workers, regardless of whether they complete a supposedly based RD or practice-based doctorate. Both have equal potential to provide quality research training and for its graduates to contribute to the empirical knowledge base of social work. This would parallel what has happened in the fields of clinical and counseling psychology, nursing, pharmacy, etc. For decades the scientist-practitioner model of psychology Ph.D. training enjoyed hegemony. But in the late 1970s, a new type of degree, the Doctor of Psychology, or Psy.D. emerged. Very similar to our current DSW model, there are now far more Psy.D. graduates than Ph.D.s, and many have successfully gone into tenure-track faculty positions in academia. I predict the same phenomena will occur within social work programs. So, lets not overlook or underestimate the potential for DSW graduates to contribute to the expansion of the science-based foundations of social work.

I am a faculty member at a Research—1 Institution with a long-standing traditional Ph.D. program. In August of 2024, we admitted four new students. Our total program enrollment is about 20 students. In contrast, at Simmons University School of Social Work, their online DSW program admits three cohorts a year of between 50 and 75 students each and has begun graduating student cohorts of 50 or so new doctorates. Last year my Ph.D. program graduated one student. Moreover, the full-time Simmons DSW can be completed in less than 2 years in contrast to the usual 5–6 years required by most Ph.D. programs. Here is how Simmons compares the DSW and Ph.D. degrees (https://online.simmons.edu/doctorate/dsw/):

A DSW prepares students to apply what they learn and research to their practice in the field. A DSW student may take a new approach they learn in class one day and apply it to their work with a client the next day. Graduates of Simmons’ DSW program will emerge as scholar-practitioners who seamlessly apply doctoral-level knowledge and practices to their work in the field.

It seems like the Simmons DSW would be far better preparation for conducting research on social work practice than a social work Ph.D. program. The demographics of social work Ph.D. programs, the route to a research career which is sorely needed within our discipline, are clearly disadvantaged, relative to the DSW.

Potential Future Steps to Promote the Research Foundations of Social Work

It would be useful to purge the social work curriculum at the BSW, MSW, and doctoral levels of pseudo-scientific, outmoded, or demonstrably false content. It is farcical that our human behavior classes continue to teach content of the theories of Freud, Maslow, Jung, Piaget, Kubler-Ross, and others as legitimate and valuable approaches to understanding human development, when these all have been known to be false for many years. It is tragic that our practice classes continue to teach interventions that have never been shown to actually help social work clients; or, worse, have been empirically evaluated and shown not to work; or worse yet, have been shown to be harmful. It is also shameful that our ethical code contains no mandate that social workers are obliged to offer their clients research-supported interventions as a first-choice treatment option, when these are known to be available and are appropriate for our client and their situation. What is needed is an addition to the NASW Code of Ethics that reads something like that found in the Ethics Code for Behavior Analysts:

They provide services that are conceptually consistent with behavioral principles, based on scientific evidence, and designed to maximize desired outcomes for and protect all clients, stakeholders, supervisees, trainees, and research participants from harm. (Emphasis added)

If we were ethically required to base the interventions we offer to clients in accord with contemporary evidence, this would powerfully drive what we teach and practice in the direction of being a more science-based field. And enhance the demand for more intervention research, conducted by and for social workers.

Every BSW, MSW, and doctoral student needs to be taught the value of asking questions in class along the lines of “Thank you Professor X, for teaching us about this theory. Can you provide us any science-based citations demonstrating that this theory is valid?” or “Thank you Professor Y, to teaching us about this method of intervention (or assessment). Can you provide us with any science-based citations demonstrating that this approach is really effective?” If many students posed such critical questions in a respectful and friendly manner, the vacuity of what is often taught would be exposed, and professors nudged to provide course content more closely aligned with empirically based knowledge.

It would also be helpful for doctoral students to be provided with positive incentives to undertake dissertation research projects more focused on actually empirically evaluating the outcomes of established or newly developed social work programs, policies, or practice (Harrison & Thyer, 1988).

Discussion

There is much to be done. But challenges can be a good thing. As Austin (National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Social Work Research, 1991) pointed out at the time there were significant deficiencies in social work research infrastructure. Many proposed solutions he and others proposed were tried out and failed. The large center grants awarded to a few social work programs intended to stimulate research and grant submissions produced a brief flurry of activity but essentially things lapsed back to pre-award levels when the grant funding was halted. The Institute for the Advancement of Social Work research was active for a few years, but disappeared, having accomplished little. Neither the NASW nor the CSWE have significantly stepped up their research activities. The Grand Challenges do not appear to be generating any commensurately grand solutions. The number of social work RDs has not significantly increased.

But there are some bright spots. The Society for Social Work and Research has grown appreciably and its conference is the major venue for social work researchers to present their work. The Journal of the Society for Social Work Research was created and serves as an additional disciplinary research outlet with a decent impact factor. This journal, Research on Social Work Practice, was founded in the year of the Austin Report and has enjoyed good growth and a decent impact factor as well, serving as a focus for sorely needed intervention studies. The European Association for Social Work Research has been established, holds an annual convention, and publishes a new journal. Over 1,000 randomized controlled studies authors by social workers have been published in English language journals (Thyer, 2015b, 2023), a number that astonishes the naysayers who have contended for decades that experimental studies are somehow a poor research tool for social workers. The research contributions of the new generation of DSWs are beginning to be felt. They are entering the academy, obtaining research grants, and producing some fine publications. The hundreds graduating each year exceed the number of new Ph.D.s, and this promises to stimulate the growth of social work research.