Chapter Two: How Do Social Workers Know

Things?

• Scientific Method p. 12 - an approach to inquiry that attempts to safeguard against errors commonly made in casual human inquiry. – Features include:

• Viewing all knowledge as provisional and subject to refutation

• Searching for evidence based on systemic and comprehensive observation

• Pursuing objectivity in observation• Replication

Scientific Method

Scientific Method • Emphasizes the pursuit of

objectivity.• Everything is open to question.• The ideal of objectivity vs. the

reality. – Empirical (RB, p. 19): empirical

evidence is evidence based upon observation.

• The act of observation affects the observed.

• Important to acknowledge biases.– Back to the blind men and the

elephant– Replication (RB, p. 20): “Replication

means duplicating a study to see if the same evidence and conclusions are supported.”

– Extension (replication over a different time period):

• i.e. What did human needs mean 1800-1921, and what did is mean 1921-1969 to the National Conference on Social Welfare?

Ways of Knowing

• Ann Hartman’s Editorial In Social Work

• Social workers as witnesses: – “Perhaps one might call social

work witnessing. The idea being that one is in a privileged position to witness and help alleviate human suffering and harm and therefore has a responsibility to testify to society about its nature. The goal shouldn't be to withdraw from that role but to fully implement it, no?” (Dover 2005)

• Practice Wisdom

Other Ways of Knowing

• Charles Ragin’s Elements of Social Research (Handout):– Research as one way of constructing

“representations of social life” – Others: films, novels, diaries,

process recordings of your practice and interactions

Other Ways of Knowing • Tradition (RB, p. 13)

– Each generation does not have to relearn the lessons that created the present body of knowledge.

– “Knowledge is the cumulative, and an inherited body of information and understanding is the jumping-off point for the development of more knowledge.”

– In practice tradition may involve conforming to an agency’s preferred way of doing things.

• Example of substance abuse treatment.

– Downside of tradition:

• Erroneous assumptions

• Overconfidence in veracity of current knowledge

• Sanction of controversial questions

Other Ways of Knowing Continued

• Authority (RB, p. 13)

– Considering the reputed expertise of the source of information in deciding whether to be guided by that information.

– Knowledge is more likely to be accepted if it comes from an authority

• e.g. scholarly sources such as journals, reliable sources, etc.

– “Can help and hinder human inquiry.”

– MD: Resistance to “Expert knowledge” or the “cult of the expert”

Other Ways of Knowing Continued

• Common Sense (RB, p. 14)– Pros: Pragmatic and can generate

scientific research questions – Cons: Risky and insufficient– Why not research whether common sense

makes sense?• Popular Media (RB, p. 14)

– Pros: Source of digested research results• Only as good as the journalist

who did the abstracting of results• If an independent review of the

cited sources shows a good source, can be helpful in informing practice and clients

– Cons: Source of new but unvalidated results and misinterpretation

Recognizing Flaws

• Inaccurate Observation (RB, p. 15) – All inquiry is based on observation. – Occurs when we are too causal in our

observations, not making deliberate attempts to reduce errors.

– Essential to know what is occurring before we can determine why it is occurring.

– Human Observation vs. Scientific Observation

• General human observation is unsystematic and haphazard

• Scientific observation is conscious activity and thereby reduces error

Recognizing the Flaws Continued

• Overgeneralization (RB, p. 15) – the assumption that a few similar events are evidence of a general pattern – occurs when we generalize based on

an insufficient number of observations • PB example of interviewing

“rioters”: – My research in Detroit in 1967 - If you

don’t overgeneralize, can be a source of valuable hypotheses for further research, such as role of exempt property in deterioration of cities.

• Science guards against it with large samples and replication (hopefully independent)

Recognizing the Flaws Continued

• Selective Observation (RB, p. 16) - We attend to events that correspond to our predictions and overlook contradictions. – “The world is as we see it.”

• The review of peers assists scientist to control for this source of error

• Value of using eco-systems approach to organize research findings in a way which guides practice, and avoids selective observation:– “Nobody Loves You When You’re

Down and Out: Knowledge of the Psychosocial Consequences of Unemployment, 1979 and 2004” (Dover 1979 and Dover in progress, see blackboard)

Recognizing the Flaws

• Ex Post Facto Hypothesizing (RB, p. 16)

– Making new hypothesizes based on one studies results

• Happens when we think up reasons to explain away inconsistencies between what we believe and what we observe

• Ok to do as long as we test the new hypothesis, otherwise it is just made-up information

– EXAMPLE: Battered women’s outreach

– EXAMPLE: Abandonment of the seduction theory (Freud and Fliess)

Recognizing the Flaws

• Ego Involvement in Understanding (RB, p. 17)– Can create error when we resist

accepting observations that make us look less desirable

• Always a danger

• Partially controlled for in science by peer review.

• Commonly seen in program evaluation research.

Recognizing the Flaws Continued

• Premature Closure of Inquiry (RB, p. 18)– Occurs when we rule out certain

lines of inquiry that might produce findings that we would find undesirable

• Overgeneralization, selective observations, made-up information, and defensive uses of illogical reasoning.– A particular type of treatment that

works with one client does not mean it will work with all clients

Illogical Reasoning

– "the exception that proves the rule”

– "gambler's fallacy” • a good turn of luck is just around

the corner.– Related: string of good or bad

luck seen as a real trend

– Saved by not wearing a seatbelt • Key Concept:

– anomalies

Illogical Reasoning Continued

• Straw Person Argument (RB, p. 18) – When someone attacks a particular

position by distorting it in a way that makes it easier to attack

• Ad hominem attack (RB, p. 18)– Attack the messenger rather than the

message

• Bandwagon Appeal (RB, p. 18)– where a relatively new intervention is

touted on the basis of its growing popularity

Illogical Reasoning Continued

• Mystification - occurs when attribute things we do not understand to supernatural or mystical causes.– Assertion of the unknowable- A

cherished belief about practice effectiveness must be true and is beyond the ability of researchers to test out.

– An article of faith in science is that everything is potentially knowable

To Err is Human…

• Science differs from casual, day-to-day inquiry in two ways:

1. Science inquiry is a conscious activity– we decide what, how, and for how

long we will observe the object or phenomenon of interest.

2. Scientific inquiry is more careful than our causal efforts

Objectivity and Subjectivity in Scientific

Inquiry• Paradigms (RB, p. 19)

– fundamental model or scheme that organizes our view of something

• Research Traditions (Laudan)

Objectivity & Subjectivity

• Acts a frame of reference that help shape our observations and understandings – Positivist paradigm –

emphasizes the pursuit of objectivity in our quest to observe and understand reality

– Social constructivist – emphasizes multiple subjective realities and the most impossibility of objectivity

– Postmodernism (an extreme form of Constructivism)– an objective reality does not even exist

Key Concepts By Page

• Direct, personal inquiry 11• Scientific method 11• Direct experience and observation

(how we know things, p. 11)• Everything is subject to refutation

(tentative until proven) 12• Everything is open to question 12• Authority 12• Dogma 12• Empirical Support (G) 12• Tradition 13• Common Sense 14

Key Concepts By Page

• Inaccurate observation 15• Overgeneralization 15• Replication of inquiry (G) 16• Selective observation 16• Ego involvement in

understanding 17• Ex post facto hypothesizing 17• Ad Hominem Attack• Bandwagon effect or appeal 18• Straw person argument 18• Illogical reasoning 18 • Premature closure of inquiry 18

Key Concepts By Page • Positivist paradigm (G) 19

• Postmodernism (G) 19

• Positivism (G) 19

• Social constructivist paradigm (G) 19

• Modernism 19

• Frame of reference (paradigm) 19

• All knowledge is provisional (tentative until proven beyond reasonable doubt)

• Hypothesis (G) 323

Key Concepts ABC • Ad Hominem Attack• All knowledge is considered

provisional (tentative until proven beyond reasonable doubt)

• Authority 12• Bandwagon effect or appeal 18• Common sense 14• Direct experience and observation

(how we know things, p. 11)• Direct, personal inquiry 11• Dogma 12• Ego involvement in understanding

17• Empirical Support (G) 12• Everything subject to refutation 12

Key Concepts ABC • Everything is open to question

12

• Ex post facto hypothesizing 17

• Frame of reference (paradigm) 19

• Hypothesis (G)

• Illogical reasoning 18

• Inaccurate observation 15

• Modernism 19

• Overgeneralization 15

• Positivism (G) 19

• Positivist paradigm (G) 19

Key Concepts ABC • Postmodernism (G) 19

• Premature closure of inquiry 18

• Provisional knowledge

• Replication of inquiry (G) 16

• Scientific method 11

• Selective observation 16

• Social constructivist paradigm (G) 19

• Straw person argument 18

• Subject to refutation

• Tradition 13

Key Points Ch. 2

1. Remember what Ann Hartman said about many ways of knowing? And how Charles Ragin pointed out that researching social life is much like other forms of inquiry such as journalism? Our attempts to learn about the world we live in come from all sources, including direct experience, tradition, authority, and direct, personal inquiry. But research is a special form of learning about the world. This is not to say that science offers total protection against the errors that nonscientists commit in casual, day-to-day inquiry, it doesn’t. But we try.

Key Points Ch. 22. Often, social workers tend to view

psychiatrists and pschologists or social workers who have doctorates as authorities, when for all you know that MSW with a clinical license and his doctorate did a dissertation on property tax valuations in Ohio’s urban areas, so he is no more an authority on clinical social work than any other MSW with 10 years of post-MSW experience working with individuals. Let’s not set each other up as an authority just based upon degrees. When a social worker makes a practice decision based upon the advice of someone just because they have a doctorate or some other credential, they are basing that decision not on evidence but on authority.

Key Points Ch. 23. But let’s say that that person with a

doctorate just authored a small study of a particular intervention and it wasn’t based on a random sample in any case. Wouldn’t there be a danger of overgeneralization? Yes. In that case, what would be one way to try to gather further data? Well, you wouldn’t want to replicate the study, since it wasn’t based on a random sample anyway, and perhaps there wasn’t a control group that received a standard intervention to which it could be compared. But let’s say it was a well-designed study, but the sample was small. One way to guard against overgeneralization would be to do a replication of this study with another random sample from the same or similar population.

Key Points Ch. 24. It is important not to prematurely close

inquiry, thinking you already know enough. That’s a good lesson for our research in this class on SWK 100 students and the time schedules of social work majors and intents. Replication of a study is often a good idea, and there is nothing wrong with not exactly duplicating the study, if flaws were found. Improve by all means, even if it means items aren’t identical from year to year. After all, the sample has changed as well, and changes in samples are likely to affect answers more than changes in questions! Don’t assume an intervention is a success if there is a risk that there was a premature closure of inquiry. For instance, in last year’s SWK 100 study, the one’s studied were the ones who showed up for class, but there were a lot of absences! Anyway we could solve that problem? A blackboard survey by any chance?

5. One of the worst errors in is to ignore events that don't correspond with a previously observed pattern of events is. That is called selective observation. It’s important not to try to thing that concepts in the text mean what they might mean in everyday usage. For instance, selective observation doesn’t mean something like choosing the wrong sample or picking which items to pay attention to. Nor does it mean the same thing as selection bias, covered in chapter 16. It means what it says it means in chapter 2, it is a common, human thing to do. You are used to seeing a pattern of events. You see something new and different that might contradict what you thought, and you disregard it! That is what selective observation means in this context. And the best antidote to it is using a clear research design, consulting with colleagues about the previous patterns and the new observations (rather than ignoring them), and planning research which studies things over time and across a sufficient number of observations that you can ascertain whether a newly observed finding is truly an exception to the rule or evidence that your rule needs to be rethought!

6. Another hard to understand word is “ex post facto hypothesizing”. Unless you studied a lot of Latin or had a Latin dictionary handy, you wouldn’t know that “ex post facto” means “after the fact.” Ex post facto hypothesizing is fine if it means you did an inductive study, the kind where you start without any clear hypotheses and collect data and then afterwards try to theorize about what you saw. That’s especially ok if you plan to do more research later. It really is legitimate to engage in ex post facto hypothesizing if doing so requires additional research.

Key Points

• 7. But if your ex post facto hypothesizing amounts to explaining away your inability to confirm your initial hypothesis, that’s a source of common misinterpretation of findings. Yes it’s illogical, but there are lots of kinds of illogical reasoning, this after the fact hypothesizing, a specific kind of flaw in scientific reasoning.

Key Points• 8. Ok, we’ve talked about Latin, now what

about your typical everyday language. For instance, common sense. I’m sure you will realize that the scientific method doesn’t tend to put much store in common sense. So even if you might think common sense is a good thing in general, on the average research test, common sense may not get you very far. Knowing Latin, maybe. Common sense, problem know. But what about knowing what words like “straw person” means? Priceless. Me, I’m always clueless and have to look it up, even though I’ve been the victim time and time again of straw person attacks. You say A, someone says you said B and since B makes no sense whatsoever, you make no sense whatsoever. So what a straw person argument does is distort the position of the person you are trying to attack.

Key Points

• 9. Now let’s move from Latin to Philosophy! It is the philosophy of science and social science which has developed these concepts such as paradigm. A paradigm is simply a frame of reference shared by a number of people within a field or subfield. Another way of thinking about a paradigm is that it is a fundamental model or scheme that organizes our view of something.

Key Points

• 10. One paradigm is the positivist paradigm, and you will hear a lot about how this paradigm strongly emphasizes the pursuit of objectivity. You will hear that it believes in maximizing precision and objectivity in testing whether an intervention reduces an undesirable behavior. The positivist paradigm embraces rather than rejects the pursuit of objectivity in our quest to observe and understand reality.

Key Points• 11. Whereas you will hear that the social

constructivist paradigm does, and for the purposes of this course and the quiz, that is true, because the social constructivist paradigm stresses that people have multiple subjective realities. But what if it is objectively true that people have such multiple senses of reality, can’t we study those perceptions objectively? Philosophically, the issue is whether or not we as scientists believe that there is some objective reality. Postmodernism is a point of view which actually does believe that there are only multiple subjective realities, and questions the existence of an objective external reality. So it goes beyond mere social constructionism, which although it is referred to as a paradigm by the authors is really in my opinion a theoretical point of view held by people from any number of epistemological perspectives. Modernism and postmodernism are more than pardigms, they are philosophies of science about how we understand the world around us, they are epistemologies.

• 12. In my paper, Teaching Yourself to Write A Thesis: Several Easy Steps, which I’ve posted on the website, I cite Michael Mann as saying that it matters little whether the sociologist advocates positivism, interpretivism or realism or some other epistemological point of view, since in reality the sociologist operates “as if they could apprehend and describe reality through the process of operationalization, and as if they could rely on absolute standards of scientific proof for their results to be evaluated” (Mann, 1981: 548, emphasis in the original). (Not on quiz)

Key Points

• 13. A word on overgeneralization: The bottom line is that it refers to drawing conclusions about an entire population from a sample of that population which wasn’t representative. Or, it refers to drawing conclusions about population B, when the research was on population A. That’s not selective observation! That’s overgeneralization. Yes, the conclusions draw from overgeneralization may be inaccurate, but they are not inherently inaccurate. In fact, they may not be inaccurate at all! Population B may in fact be like Population A. But you don’t know that because you overgeneralized based on the study available.

• 14. You are sure to be asked about ego involvement. Basically that’s a form of bias in which you lose your ability to evaluate whether research is effective because you have so much ego involvement in the results. I mean let’s say let’s say you and your colleagues use nothing but ACT for treating cancer, despite the fact that ECT is used in Canada and Europe because of the cardiotoxicity of the A drug and because since it took so long to get E approved in the USA it costs 22 times as much here in the states. You see a study from France, one from Italy, and one from the US (but with the US one done by a doctor with consultant ties to the drug coming making E.) You put down the studies about ECT because it is not on the list of the approved regimens at the top 20 research universities, as approved by the board on which you sit! You call ECT an unnecessary treatment no more effective or less toxic than ACT and you call yet another new cancer treatment used at a top medical school not in your consortium an “outlaw treatment.” That’s a great example of “ego involvement” in evaluating research studies. It goes on all the time, and is done even by leading clinicians. Ego involvement is when you are biased against something because it threatens your authority, the tradition in which you work, or threatens your own work.

Key Points• 15. Now that doesn’t mean you

should disregard agency traditions. The ethics say you should respect your colleague’s findings, but that doesn’t mean you should agree with them. It also doesn’t mean you should disregard authority, since the ethics discuss the appropriate use of consultation and stress our accountability (but note they don’t say as much about supervision as you might think!). Think critically, and realize that tradition and authority aren’t always what they are cut out to be, but you have an obligation to seek out alternative sources of knowledge or research findings that might challenge that authority or tradition.

Key Points• 16. After all, all existing knoweldge, even

that based on authority or tradition should be:

• Provisional (tentative until proven true)• Ssubject to refutation• Supported by objective observations• Supported by systematic and

comprehensive observations• Supported by a large and diverse sample

of observations• Supported by observations gathered in

ways that seek to reduce the influence of researcher biases

• It is not enough that it is supported by the teaching of a few authoritative scientists.