The research format found in scholarly journal articles has purpose and direction. Chapters 2 and 4 in the text provide information as to the logic and makeup of a research effort. Parallel to the structure of the research format is the notion of the scientific method as a basic approach to solving problems. Your task is to analyze these two venues, identifying in what ways they complement each other, and how each venue is related to the other. You may want to access outside references regarding the concepts of research format and the scientific method.
Chapter 2
Theories in Research and Practice
Concepts and Operational Definitions among Minority Populations
Cause-and-Effect Relationships
Class Exercises for Competency Assessment
After dashing through the Looking-glass House to view its garden,
Alice says, I should see the garden far better … if I could get to the top of that hill: and here's a path that leads straight to it—at least, no, it doesn't do that … but I suppose it will at last. But how curiously it twists! It's more like a corkscrew than a path! Well this turn goes to the hill, I suppose—no it doesn't! This goes straight back to the house! Well then, I'll try it the other way. (Carroll, 1946, pp. 21–22)
Understanding the world—especially human behavior—sometimes bears a striking resemblance to Alice's convoluted and frustrating journey in Wonderland. People do what we least expect, and without any apparent rhyme or reason: A prisoner on parole who appeared to be “making it on the outside” suddenly commits another offense and goes back to jail; a marriage of 25 years that seemed to be quite solid suddenly ends in divorce; a respected and successful business executive commits suicide. Human service providers, in particular, are familiar with experiences such as these, and the path to understanding often mirrors Alice's corkscrew.
Science, however, provides a method for mapping and understanding that corkscrew. In this chapter, we discuss the basic logic underlying scientific research, beginning with an assessment of how science differs from other ways of gaining knowledge. Then, we analyze the importance of theories and their role in scientific research, drawing a parallel with the use of theories in human service practice. Following this, we discuss the role of concepts and hypotheses, showing how hypotheses serve to link theory and research. Finally, we analyze the nature of causality, because research is, at its core, a search for cause-and-effect relationships among phenomena.
2.1 SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE
Human service practice is based on knowledge of human behavior and the social environment. There are numerous ways of gaining such knowledge, but all sources of knowledge have their pitfalls. We argued in Chapter 1 that practice knowledge should be grounded in scientific research. This does not mean that science is infallible, but science does have advantages as a source of knowledge that makes it superior to other ways of gaining knowledge.
To see why this is the case, we contrast science with four other common sources of knowledge: tradition, experience, common sense, and journalism. We then discuss how science can improve professional practice.
Traditional knowledge is knowledge based on custom, habit, and repetition. It is founded on a belief in the sanctity of ancient wisdom and the ways of our forebears. People familiar with the musical Fiddler on the Roof will recall how the delightful character Tevye, a dairyman in the village of Anatevka, sang the praises of tradition:
Because of our traditions, we've kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka we have traditions for everything—how to eat, how to sleep, how to wear clothes …. You may ask, how did this tradition start? I'll tell you—I don't know! But it's a tradition. Because of our traditions, everyone knows who he is and what God expects him to do. Tradition. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as—as a fiddler on the roof! (Stein, 1964, pp. 1, 6)
For Tevye and the villagers of Anatevka, where traditions come from is unimportant. Traditions provide guidance; they offer “truth”; they are the final word. Traditions tell us that something is correct because it has always been done that way.
Traditional knowledge is widespread in all societies. Many people, for example, believe that a two-parent family is preferable to a single-parent family because the former provides a more stable and effective socializing experience for children and reduces the likelihood of maladjustment. In some cases these beliefs are grounded in religious traditions, whereas in other cases they are accepted because “everybody knows” how important two parents are to a child's development. In fact, some human service providers accept these beliefs about the traditional two-parent family despite the existence of considerable research suggesting that the two-parent family may not always be essential for high-quality adoption or foster care. For example, one review of research into this issue concluded, “In the studies reviewed here, single-parent families were found to be as nurturing and viable as dual-parent families. In fact, single-parent adoption emerged as a good plan for children” (Groze 1991, p. 326).
Human service providers can be affected in other ways by traditional beliefs. For example, the works of a Sigmund Freud or an Erik Erikson might be accepted without question, and emphasis might be placed on remaining true to their words rather than on assessing the accuracy or utility of their ideas.
Tradition can be an important source of knowledge, especially in such areas as moral judgments or value decisions, but it can have some major disadvantages. First, tradition is extremely resistant to change, even for those cases in which change might be necessary because new information surfaces or new developments occur. Second, traditional knowledge easily confuses knowledge (an understanding of what is) with values (a preference for what ought to be). For many people, the traditional emphasis on the two-parent family actually is based on a value regarding the preferred family form rather than on a knowledge of the effect that such a family has on child development.
Experience as a source of knowledge refers to firsthand, personal observations of events. Experiential knowledge is based on the assumption that truth and understanding can be achieved through personal experience, and that witnessing events will lead to an accurate comprehension of those events.
Experience is a common source of knowledge for human service workers, who have numerous opportunities to make firsthand observations of emotionally disturbed children, people with physical disabilities, foster children, and other service populations. From these contacts, practitioners can develop an understanding—not necessarily an accurate one—of what motivates their clients and what social or psychological processes have influenced them.
For example, a person working in a spousal abuse shelter will have considerable contact with women whose husbands have physically and psychologically abused them. Because of this, the worker likely is sensitive to the harm that can come to women from their husbands. After seeing women who have been so abused, this worker may conclude that marital counseling with such spouses cannot work in a climate of violence and anger, and may even be dangerous. In fact, social worker Liane Davis (1984) found that shelter workers were much less likely to recommend marital counseling than were family court judges. Family court judges did not have the powerful experience of seeing women when the effects of their abuse were most visible; moreover, family court judges have a mandate to maintain the integrity of the family. For them, marital counseling seems to be both a feasible and an appropriate way to keep the family intact. So we see that the experiences of shelter workers and judges in different settings can lead them to perceive problems and assess solutions differently.
This experiential knowledge about family dynamics and abuse may be reinforced by traditional knowledge about the importance of family life. Armed with this knowledge, a practitioner might shape an intervention effort that focuses on individual counseling or on marital counseling.
Experiential knowledge, however, has some severe limitations that can lead to erroneous conclusions. First, human perceptions are notoriously unreliable. Perception is affected by many factors, including the cultural background and the mood of the observer, the conditions under which something is observed, and the nature of what is being observed. Even under the best conditions, some misperception is likely; thus, knowledge based on experience often is inaccurate.
Second, human knowledge and understanding do not result from direct perception but, rather, from inferences that are made from those perceptions. The conclusion that marital counseling doesn't work is an inference—that is, it is not directly observed. All that has been observed is that these women have been battered by their husbands. There is no observation of the effectiveness of any type of counseling. (We discuss making inferences from observations in more detail when we address the issue of causality later in this chapter.)
Third, the very people in positions to experience something directly frequently have vested interests in perceiving that thing in a certain way. Teachers, for example, observe that the students who do poorly are the ones who do not pay strict attention during class. However, teachers have a vested interest in showing that their teaching techniques are not the reason for poor performance among students. Therefore, teachers probably would be inclined to attribute students' failings to the students' lack of effort and inattentiveness rather than to their own inadequacies as educators.
A final limitation on experiential knowledge is that it is difficult to know if the people directly available to you are accurate representatives of all the people about whom you wish to draw conclusions. If they are not, then any conclusions drawn from your observations may be in error. To use our earlier example, are the battered women who contact a spousal abuse shelter representative of all battered women? If the women who contact a shelter are different in some way, and if these differences influence the effectiveness of counseling in the shelter, then you cannot generalize conclusions from their outcomes in counseling to the experiences of all battered women. Battered women who go to a shelter may be more affluent or less isolated and, therefore, might demonstrate different outcomes in counseling than less affluent or more isolated women would.
The accumulation of knowledge from tradition and experience often blends to form what people call common sense: practical judgments based on the experiences, wisdom, and prejudices of a people. People with common sense are presumed to be able to make sound decisions even though they lack specialized training and knowledge. Yet, is common sense an accurate source of knowledge? Consider the following contradictory examples. Common sense tells us that people with similar interests and inclinations will be likely to associate with one another. When we see a youngster who smokes marijuana associating with others who do the same, we may sagely comment, “Birds of a feather flock together.” Then, however, we see an athletic woman become involved with a bookish, cerebral man, and we say, “Opposites attract.”
In other words, common sense often explains everything—even when those explanations contradict one another. This is not to say that common sense is unimportant or always useless. Common sense can be valuable and accurate, which is not surprising, because people need sound information as a basis for interacting with others and functioning in society. However, common sense does not normally involve a rigorous and systematic attempt to distinguish reality from fiction. Rather, it tends to accept what “everyone knows” to be true and to reject contradictory information. Furthermore, common sense often is considered to be something that people either have or don't have, because it is not teachable. In fact, it often is contrasted with “book learning.” This discourages people from critically assessing their commonsense knowledge and tempering it with knowledge acquired from other sources. For this reason, commonsense knowledge should be accepted and used cautiously. As a basis for human service practice, knowledge needs to be based on the rigorous and systematic methods used in scientific research. Common sense or a vague feeling of “helping” is not enough.
The materials prepared by journalists for newspapers, magazines, television, websites, or other media are another important source of knowledge about the world for most people. With the explosion of news sources available on cable television and the Internet, people now have access to vast amounts of journalistic information. Though some journalism consists of opinion pieces based on the speculations and inferences of the journalist, much of it, like science, is grounded in observation: Reporters interview people or observe events and write their reports based on those observations. In addition, with modern technology, journalists often are in a position to provide a video and/or audio record of what happened at a scene.
So it may seem, at first glance, that science and journalism have much in common as sources of knowledge, and significant similarities between the two endeavors can be identified. Both use observation to seek out accurate knowledge about the world. In fact, some journalism can, at times, take on many of the characteristics of social science research. Some journalistic output, for example, can look a lot like the in-depth interviews and case studies we will discuss in Chapter 9. However, although scientific standards require that scientists use the systematic procedures discussed in this book, journalism can—and often does—fall far short of meeting these standards.
A key difference between science and journalism is that the observations of scientists are much more systematic in nature. This means that scientists utilize far more careful procedures than journalists to reduce the chances that their conclusions will be inaccurate. For example, a journalist interested in the experiences of prison inmates probably will interview a few inmates who are made available to him by prison authorities and then use these interviews to draw conclusions, at least implicitly, about the experiences of all prisoners. Social scientists would recognize that prisoners selected by the authorities are likely to differ from other prisoners in some important ways: They may have been selected because they committed less serious offenses or were model prisoners. Their experience of prison also is likely to be very different from that of a more serious offender or someone who has chronic confrontations with prison authorities. Recognizing this, social scientists would be very careful about how they selected inmates on whom to make observations, and usually would not accept a sample selected by prison authorities. The best sampling procedures, which will be discussed in Chapter 6, would be those that ensure that all types of prisoners have a chance to appear in the sample. This could be done, for example, by interviewing all the prisoners or, if that were not feasible,&#x