Читать книгу Social Work Research Methods - Reginald O. York - Страница 38

Susan is a social work intern at a family counseling agency, where she engages in intake interviews of persons seeking the help of the counseling center. Her agency supervisor has been helpful in her efforts to improve her interviewing skills. But she realizes that being a professional social worker goes beyond intake interviewing skills. It entails knowledge of practice, social policy, and social justice. She has examined how science is different from other ways of gathering information to help with decisions. For example, she recently heard a fellow social worker say, “Things were really crazy last night at the emergency room of the hospital; it must be because there was a full moon.” When Susan questioned this social worker, she responded, “Well, I have seen this with my very own eyes; whenever there is a full moon, things get really crazy in the emergency room.” Susan realized that this social worker had witnessed “crazy” behavior when the moon was full, but what about when the moon was not full? Had this social worker ever made a note of behavior when the moon was full and when the moon was not full and compared the number of crazy incidents? Susan realized that she would be more convinced of the effect of the full moon if her colleague had seen a greater incidence of “crazy” behavior when the moon was full than when it was not. That would be using science as a way of knowing. But this was not what this social worker had done. She had only witnessed behavior during the full moon.

Susan also made a few notes about the scientific way of investigating behavior during the full moon. For example, what does this fellow social worker mean by the word “crazy”? Was she referring to the number of admissions to the emergency room, the number of patients who engaged in aggressive behaviors, or what? How would we measure these things? And, of course, Susan would need data both when the moon was full and when it was not. In other words, Susan would need to employ methods consistent with the spirit of scientific inquiry, which seeks to discover rather than to justify, through methods of inquiry that are objective and comprehensive. Susan is aware that anecdotal evidence (evidence from a single example) is not good evidence. You can offer proof of just about any weird theory with a single example. You must go beyond a single example to engage in the scientific process of investigation.

Susan might start a process of scientific research by reviewing the literature on the subject of the full moon and unusual behavior. If her question is well answered by the current literature, she would decide that she does not need to reinvent the wheel by doing another study. If not, she would define the concept of unusual behavior, find a method of measuring it, collect data on this behavior when the moon was full and when it was not, analyze the data to see if unusual behavior was more prevalent when the moon was full than when it was not, and draw conclusions consistent with the results. That would exemplify the scientific method of inquiry.