Research and the Social Work Picture by Shaw Ian

Author:Shaw, Ian [Shaw, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Social Work
ISBN: 9781447338901
Google: M8SrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2019-09-01T04:32:08+00:00

In other words, we have advocates of experimentation that worked within a very different frame of reference from today’s practitioners of randomised control trials. Greenwood, for example, pays his dues to early sociologists such as Charles Cooley and William Sumner. He also acknowledges Albion Small, Herbert Mead, Pitirim Sorokin, Robert Park, Robert Lynd, W.S. Robinson, Florian Znaniecki, Dorothy Thomas, Robert MacIver and Vivian Palmer, Paul Lazarsfeld and Stuart Chapin. Within Greenwood’s text we find also Weber, W.I. Thomas, Margaret Mead and Frederick Thrasher. While some of these names will not be familiar to present day readers, it suffices to say that many are writers who normally are treated as occupying positions oppositional to those of present day proponents of experimental designs.

Take for example, Chapin’s remarks as president of the American Sociological Association:

Techniques are no more effective in the long run than the soundness of the basic logic that underlies them. Technique should not become an end in itself lest you remain a skilled artisan instead of a creative worker who invents and discovers. Technique should not become a snobbish escape device in which you seek mere intellectual security. Do not fear intuitive insights which may lead to fruitful new hypotheses. Remember that social values are an important subject matter of study and value judgments contribute to decisions on what to study. But try to keep your value systems from undermining the objectivity of your research method. (‘Presidential Advice’, 1953, p 599)

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