Research

CSW Research Vision Statement

The College aspires to be a resource-rich community built upon respect for and collective interest in diverse methods of inquiry, where faculty and students are actively engaged in innovative, community-based collaborative research, nationally and internationally, designed to attain a better society.

Research that makes a difference…

Grounded in more than a century of intervention experience in the real world, the College of Social Work is uniquely suited to contribute to key developments on the frontiers of science. The major contours of these developments include:
 

• Increased emphasis on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary, translational research to improve interventions
• Efforts underway to use translation science to develop a systematic interdisciplinary “science of behavior change”
• Recognition of the need to better understand how complex, multilevel, dynamic systems effect everything from gene expression to effective implementation of interventions
• Development of strategies for moving research from the lab to the clinic to culturally diverse community settings.

Transdisciplinary-translation science (Sussman, 2006; see also NIH Roadmap, 2008) is commonly characterized by efforts to roll out research more quickly from “mouse to human” or “bench to trench”.  Systematically determining “what works, for whom, under what conditions", when applying science to the prevention and/or amelioration of personal and social problems and their sequalae, is a centerpiece of research in the College.  This includes the development of theory-driven, evidence-based interventions that can be disseminated and implemented effectively in diverse contexts.

A number of technological and statistical developments make it possible for faculty, staff, and students in the College to engage in a more complex and “nuanced” approach to science. This includes more affordable technology for collecting data in state agencies and in community-based, nonprofit agencies, common sites for social work research.   Moreover, an array of sophisticated statistical methods for modeling self selection into and attrition from interventions; examining contextual effects; for modeling nonlinear, dynamic systems at various levels and/or units of analysis; along with the computing resources to manage the volume of data required to carry out such analyses.