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Research on Social Work Practice

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• Description
• Aims and Scope
• Editorial Board
• Abstracting / Indexing
• Submission Guidelines

There is a growing movement in social work toward a more empirical selection of therapies and interventions because, to be effective, you have to know what works. As the community of practitioners, scholars and students interested in applying scientific methods of analysis to social work problems continues to grow, the need for a publication dedicated to social work practice outcomes has never been greater. Research on Social Work Practice is the first professional social work journal to focus on evaluation research and on validating methods of assessment in social work practice.

Vital Information Research on Social Work Practice is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the assessment methods and outcomes of social work practice.  Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal or interpersonal importance.  Interventions include behavior analysis and therapy; psychotherapy or counseling with individuals; case management; education; supervision; practice involving couples, families, or small groups; advocacy; community practice; organizational management; and the evaluation of social policies.

The journal primarily serves as an outlet for the publication of:

• Original reports of evidence-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice.
• Original reports of empirical studies on the development and validation of social work assessment methods.
• Original evidence-based reviews of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice.  The two types of review articles considered for publication are: 1) reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention; and 2) reviews of evidence-based interventions applicable to a particular psychosocial problem.

Comprehensive Coverage Each issue of Research on Social Work Practice brings you the latest scholarship to help bridge the gap between research and practice. Regular features include: Outcome Studies New Methods of Assessment Scholarly Reviews Invited Essays Book Reviews

In-Depth Special Issues Research on Social Work Practice frequently supplements its broad coverage with in-depth studies of topics of particular concern through Special Issues or Special Sections. Previous examples include:

• Research on Social Work Practice in Chinese Communities (Vol.12, n.4)
• Honoring Walter W. Hudson (Vol.12, n.1)
• Flexner Revisited (Vol.11, n.2)
• Research on Social Work Practice in Ireland (Vol.10, n.6)
• Technology and Social Work (Vol.10, n.4)
• Australian Social Work Research (Vol.10, n.2)

By connecting practice and research in an artful and readable fashion, RSWP has provided a synergy for the helping professions — the vital recognition that without research, practice is blind; and without practice, research is mute. — Martin Bloom Professor, School of Social Work, University of Connecticut In the relatively few years since its inception, Research on Social Work Practice has become one of the most highly respected and frequently cited journals in our field. Researchers, practitioners, and students have all found its contents to be invaluable in their work. — Dianne Harrison Montgomery Dean and Professor, School of Social Work, Florida State University   The unique manner in which the editors cover the broad spectrum of research on social work practice is destined to make the journal become a classic in the field. This is a must reading for all engaged in any level of practice research. — Moses Newsome, Jr. Dean, School of Social Work, Norfolk State University Past-President, Council on Social Work Education This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

Research on Social Work Practice , sponsored by the Society for Social Work and Research, is a disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the methods and outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance, including behavior analysis or psychotherapy involving individuals; case management; practice involving couples, families, and small groups; community practice education; and the development, implementation, and evaluation of social policies.

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	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
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	University of Hong Kong
	California State University - San Bernardino, USA
	East China University of Science & Technology, China
	Florida State University, USA
	The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA
	Dartmouth College, USA
	University of Scranton, USA
	University of Alabama, USA
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	Assiut University, Egypt
	Abilene Christian University, USA
	University of Wolverhampton, UK
	University at Fredonia, SUNY, USA
	Wright State University, USA
	Virginia Commonwealth University, USA
	University of South Dakota, USA
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	The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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	Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
	Troy University at Dothan, USA
	Columbia University, USA
	University of Alabama, USA
	University of Connecticut, USA
	North Carolina Central University, USA
	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
	Beijing Normal University, China
	Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

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Guidelines for Authors

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP) is a peer-reviewed disciplinary journal devoted to the publication of empirical research concerning the outcomes of social work practice. Social work practice is broadly interpreted to refer to the application of intentionally designed social work intervention programs to problems of societal and/or interpersonal importance. Interventions include, but are not limited to, behavior analysis and therapy, psychotherapy or counseling with individuals, cognitive therapy, case management/care coordination, education, supervision, practice involving couples, families, or small groups, advocacy, community practice, organizational management, and the evaluation of social policies. At least one author of a submitted article must be a professional social worker, and/or the interventions evaluated must have been provided by professional social workers.

The journal will primarily serve as an outlet for the publication of:

1. Original reports of empirically-based evaluation studies on the outcomes of social work practice;

2. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses of the practice-research literature that convey direct applications (not simply implications) to social work practice. The only two types of systematic reviews considered for publication are:

A. Systematic reviews of the evidence-based status of a particular psychosocial intervention or assessment method, or B. Systematic reviews of different psychosocial interventions applicable to clients with a particular psychosocial problem.

The journal welcomes empirical research appropriately derived from a variety of etiological and intervention theories, as well as studies which focus on evaluations not based upon formal theoretical frameworks. Studies using diverse methodologies, such as group or single-system research designs, qualitative approaches, mixed methods approaches, and interdisciplinary works are welcome to be submitted. Replication studies are welcome, as are well-designed studies with negative findings or reports of treatment failures. Authors are encouraged to submit only articles of the highest quality for editorial review and possible publication. The submission of seriously flawed or marginal studies is discouraged. Reports of inferential statistics involving significant differences must be accompanied by suitable measures of effect sizes and their appropriate confidence intervals, and include a discussion of the practical impact indicated by these effects.

Articles reporting original research involving data collection from human beings must include a statement indicating the source of Institutional Review Board Approval (blinded in the original submission) or a clear statement addressing why IRB review was not necessary.

Manuscripts which do not fit into one of the above two categories should not be submitted, and if received will be promptly returned to the author un-reviewed. Occasionally other types of submissions are published in the journal (e.g., guest editorials, conference proceedings, research center descriptions), but these are usually invited and accepted at the discretion of the Editor.

Inappropriate Submissions: The journal does not usually publish narrative case studies, surveys, program descriptions, theoretical, philosophical or conceptual works, correlational investigations, historical reviews, retrospective predictor studies, purely methodological articles, descriptive studies, or needs assessments. The journal no longer accepts for review psychometric studies, reports of the development and validation testing of measurement methods useful for research or practice . Authors are urged to submit such studies to the many other social work journals which do not have the intervention-research focus of Research on Social Work Practice . The journal publishes occasional special issues devoted to a particular topic and readers with an interest in proposing a topic for such a special issue and to serve as a Guest Editor for that issue are welcome to contact the Editor.

Authors are encouraged to make pre-publication use of a data-depository ( http://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories#general ) to ensure post-publication access to their data and to indicate this in the submitted manuscript. At a minimum, reports of original data-based research should include a statement from the authors indicating where qualified researchers may obtain a copy of the data and data-coding manual (this is usually the corresponding author). This stipulation is to encourage transparency in the reporting process and to promote re-analysis and replication efforts by independent scholars.

Authors whose native language is not English are encouraged to have their submission carefully edited by English language experts prior to submission. Sage Publications Inc. offers such a service, which can be located at: http://languageservices.sagepub.com/en/

Authors not familiar with current APA style are encouraged to review the free online style guides provided by the American Psychological Association, which can be located at:

http://www.apastyle.org/index.aspx?_ga=1.161514751.2121075784.1468782120 . Submissions out of compliance with APA style will be returned un-reviewed.

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process Sage is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID . 

ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized. 

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID iDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID iD then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID iD is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID iD please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

Research on Social Work Practice (RSWP)  may accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers; please alert the Editorial Office when submitting and include the DOI for the preprint in the designated field in the manuscript submission system. Authors should not post an updated version of their paper on the preprint server while it is being peer reviewed for possible publication in the journal. If the article is accepted for publication, the author may re-use their work according to the journal's author archiving policy.

If your paper is accepted, you must include a link on your preprint to the final version of your paper.

Visit the Sage Journals and Preprints page for more details about preprints.

Guidelines for Preparing Quantitative Outcome Studies

The journal requires that accepted quantitative manuscripts be formatted in compliance with the Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS) found in the sixth edition of the APA Publication Manual . Note that apart from general guidelines, there are separate additional guidelines for reporting quasi-experimental and experimental studies, as well as for meta-analyses. There are also guidelines for reporting a study participant flow chart, which should be included in nomothetic outcome studies. Mixed methods papers including quantitative analyses should have these elements of the article compliant with these guidelines. Causal inferences, if any, should be made conservatively and not go beyond the limits imposed by the presented methods and data.

Single-case research studies which build upon traditional case narrative reports by adding the systematic and empirical measurement of clinically relevant variables (e.g., client’s problems or strengths) before, during and after treatment begins, are welcome submissions. Outcome measures must have acceptable levels of reliability and validity, the intervention must be well-described, and any causal inferences drawn must not go beyond those legitimately derived from the data. Data must be presented in the form of line graphs. The guidelines by Kratochwill et al. (2010) are recommended in this regard.

Articles reporting the results of a quasi-experimental outcome study must follow the standards found in the Transparent Reporting of Evaluation Studies using Nonrandomized Designs (TREND) checklist. Include a completed TREND Checklist as an appendix to your paper. See http://www.cdc.gov/trendstatement/ .

Articles reporting a randomized controlled trial must follow the Consolidated Reporting Standards for Randomized Trials (CONSORT), and include a completed CONSORT Checklist. See http://www.consort-statement.org/consort-statement/ . The authors of outcome studies evaluating non-pharmacological interventions (e.g., psychosocial treatments) are urged to familiarize themselves with relevant guidelines useful for reporting such studies. Grant et al. (2013) is a recommended resource for authors to consult, as is Boutron, Ravaud and Moher (2012).

Authors submitting a randomized clinical trial (RCT) or quasi-experimental outcome study for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered their study protocol in a suitable clinical trials registry , such as clinicaltrials.gov. The article by Harrison and Mayo-Wilson (2014) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering their protocol. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any clinical trials registry they have submitted their protocol to.

Guidelines for Preparing Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

RSWP welcomes well-crafted empirically-based reviews of the treatment literature. Such manuscripts should present either the evidence regarding a particular psychosocial intervention , various interventions for a particular psychosocial problem or a critical review of treatment studies focused on a particular disorder, problem or condition. Review articles should have a clear social work focus, and cite the relevant social work literature, if any exists, in addition to pertinent findings from the broader behavioral and social sciences. Manuscripts of this type should provide the reader with clear and compelling applications to practice, not untested implications.

Articles claiming to be a Systematic Review should adhere to the guidelines for preparing systematic reviews developed by the Cochrane Collaboration (Higgins & Green, 2009) or the Campbell Collaboration (2014). In addition, the authors of systematic reviews and meta-analyses must follow the guidelines found in the PRISMA Statement ( Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses ), found at: http://www.prisma-statement.org/ .

If the article does not follow these standards, the paper should be titled as A Narrative Review, or simply A Review , and the specific term Systematic Review should be avoided.

Authors submitting a systematic review for review and publication are strongly encouraged to have pre-registered the review protocol in a suitable registry, such as PROSPERO ( www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO ). The article by Stewart, Moher and Shekelle (2012) can provide guidance regarding the rationale for and process of pre-registering systematic review protocols. The submitted article should include a statement giving the reference to any registry in which the protocol is published.

The EQUATOR Network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency of Health Research) is a recommended resource for authors preparing studies for submission to RSWP which deal with the general topic of health care. See http://www.equator-network.org/ .

Completed copies of relevant TREND, CONSORT or PRISMA checklists should be included as a separate supplemental file when submitting the manuscript online.

Guidelines for Preparing Qualitative Studies

RSWP welcomes well-written rigorous qualitative outcome studies. Studies of the processes of an intervention, absent credible evidence that the intervention actually produces positive effects, are not invited for submission. Authors are encouraged to judiciously take advantage of the journal’s lack of a page limitation and craft a manuscript that details the context and methods to provide transparency of the study. The qualitative methodology used must be consistent throughout the study. The sampling, data collection, and analysis should make sense considering the chosen research question and the method. Authors should describe strategies employed to ensure the trustworthiness and credibility of the study, and provide a replicable audit trail. Qualitative data analysis software may be appropriately used in the analysis, but is not required. For suggestions on creating well-written qualitative article consult Fawcett et al. (2014), Staller and Krumer-Nevo (2013) and Pratt (2009).

How to submit a manuscript: The journal requires authors to use the MANUSCRIPT CENTRAL web-based portal to submit their manuscripts. The submission portal is available via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rswp

Use of the Journal Article Reporting Standards: All submissions are required to be prepared using the formatting standards found in the 6th Edition (2010) of the APA Publication Manual. Authors of data-based papers are specifically asked to adhere to the relevant Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS). The Editor is available to consult with you about any questions you may have regarding complying with these standards. They have been adopted to help promote consistency in research reporting, to try and further elevate the standards of work appearing in Research on Social Work Practice , and to ultimately improve the credibility of research findings available to the profession and the public. The abstracts of research articles must include the following headings: Purpose:, Methods:, Results:, Conclusions:. Manuscripts not adhering to current APA style conventions will be returned to the authors un-reviewed and with a request to revise their paper and to resubmit it. A very common error is for authors to inappropriately include the issue number following the volume number, in citations to articles appearing in journals paginated by year. See the APA manual if you are not clear when issue numbers should and should not be included. Some bibliographic software programs automatically include issue numbers, and these should be manually deleted, if necessary.

All manuscripts should include an abstract on a separate page that contains no more than 150 words, and also a separate title page (designated as Title Page) which includes: 1) title of the article; 2) corresponding author's full name, current position, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers; 3) co-author(s)' full name(s) and affiliation(s); 4) up to five key words as they should appear if they were to be published. Manuscripts will not be considered for submission if they do not include these elements. Tables and/or Figures are to be included when necessary to depict the results. There is no specific limit on the total number of pages, tables or figures.

Authors submitting manuscripts are protected by common law against the unauthorized use of their unpublished work. Specifically, an unpublished manuscript is considered to be a confidential or privileged paper. All reviewers will be asked to destroy or return the manuscript after their review is completed; in addition, reviewers will be asked not to circulate, quote, cite, or refer to the unpublished work in any way unless specific permission is granted by the author.

Artwork Submissions

High-resolution figures should be uploaded as separate electronic files, with callouts for each in the text. Figure legends should include full explanations of the figures and be typewritten double-spaced with numbers corresponding to those on the figure files themselves. All figures must be specifically referred to in the text and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Acceptable file formats for figures include TIFF, EPS, and JPEG, and PDF Microsoft Application Files are acceptable for vector art (line art). Permission for use of the copyrighted material is the responsibility of the author. All artwork must be camera ready.

Tables should be numbered consecutively corresponding to in-text citation. Each table should be prepared on a separate page at the end of the text document and preferably should be no larger than a single page. Include a brief descriptive title of the table and a footnote with explanation of any abbreviations. All tables must be specifically referred to in the text for placement and numbered in order of appearance in the text. Elements in tables should be separated by tabs, not cells or lines.

Conflict of Interest

Authors are required to disclose any commercial, financial, or other associations that could pose a conflict of interest in connection with their submitted article and these must be disclosed on the title page at the time of submission.

Financial Disclosure/Funding

Authors should list all funding sources (and ID numbers, as appropriate) related to the study and to the article preparation.

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the corresponding author will be required to complete an electronic copyright transfer form. From SageTRACK website “Corresponding Author Center” choose the correct manuscript from “Manuscripts with Decisions” and from the ACTION box on the far right side, choose “Contributor Form.” After reading the form and completing the appropriate boxes, clicking the “I accept” box will confirm appropriate copyright transfer.

Authors are required to submit written permission from the original publisher to reprint copyright-protected material, including quoted material of 300 words or more from a single source (journal article or book).

Submission of a manuscript implies commitment to publish in this journal. Authors submitting manuscripts to the journal must not simultaneously submit them to another journal, nor should manuscripts have been published elsewhere in substantially similar content. All authors of a submitted manuscript must be made aware of and consent to the submission.

Publish Ahead of Print With OnlineFirst

OnlineFirst is a feature in which completed articles are published online prior to their inclusion in a print issue, offering authors the advantage of making their research accessible to the public in a more timely manner. Only online subscribers can view these PDFs, but abstracts are available to the public to view for free. Each OnlineFirst manuscript is citable by the publication date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the Digital Object Identifier (DOI), providing a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment. You can cite OnlineFirst articles as follows:

Author’s last name, first initials. Article title. Journal title. Pre-published month day, year; DOI: 10.1177/ 0123456789123456

Once your article has completed the production process and before it is published in a print issue, it will be posted online. You can access RSWP OnlineFirst articles on the Web at http://rswp.sagepub.com/pap.dtl . Once posted online, articles may not be retracted or edited. If your article is not completed prior to its publication date, it will not go on OnlineFirst but will be posted online with the issue in which it is published.

The journal uses a blind peer review system to evaluate manuscripts, and the expertise of the Editorial Board members is augmented by the extensive use of Guest Reviewers. Most authors receive an initial editorial decision within two months of submission, accompanied by constructive peer commentary. Most articles eventually accepted for publication undergo extensive author-completed revisions, based on peer-review commentary, prior to acceptance. The journal has a modest backlog of accepted manuscripts, thus authors of accepted manuscripts can expect a lag of about 12 months or less, from final acceptance to print publication. However, the journal has a publish-ahead-of-print service in that the final, corrected and accepted version of their paper will be published electronically on the journal’s website, with a ‘doi’. This will permit its ready access to the community of scholars, students, and practitioners months ahead of print publication. These articles will be both citable and downloadable. Articles are published in the general order of their acceptance.

Boutron, I., Ravaud, P. & Moher, D. (2012). Randomized clinical trials of nonpharmacological treatments. New York: CRC Press.

Campbell Collaboration. (2014). Campbell Collaboration systematic review: Policies and guidelines. The Campbell Collaboration. Available from www.campbellcollaboration.org

Fawcett, S. E., Waller, M. A., Miller, J. W., Schwieterman, M. A., Hazen, B. T., & Overstreet, R. E. (2014). A trail guide to publishing success: Tips on writing influential conceptual, qualitative, and survey sesearch. Journal of Business Logistics , 35 (1), 1-16.

Grant, S., Montgomery, P., Hopewell, S., Macdonald, G., Hoher, D. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2013). Developing a reporting guideline for social and psychological intervention trials. Research on Social Work Practice, 23, 595-602.

Harrison, B. A. & Mayo-Wilson, E. (2014). Trial registration: Understanding and preventing

bias in social work research. Research on Social Work Practice, 24, 372-376.

Kratochwill, T. R., Hitchcock, J., Horner, R. H., Levin, J. R., Odom, S. L., Rindskopf, D. M. &

Shadish, W. R. (2010). Single-case designs technical documentation . Retrieved from What Works Clearinghouse website: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/Document/229

Pratt, M. G. (2009). From the editors: For the lack of a boilerplate: Tips on writing up (and reviewing) qualitative research. Academy of Management Journal , 52 , 856-862.

Staller, K. M., & Krumer-Nevo, M. (2013). Successful qualitative articles: A tentative list of cautionary advice. Qualitative Social Work , 12 , 247-253.

Stewart, L., Moher, D. & Shekelle, P. (2012). Why prospective registration of systematic reviews makes sense. Systematic Reviews, 1 :7. doi:10.1186/2046-4053-1-7

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Research on Social Work Practice - Impact Score, Ranking, SJR, h-index, Citescore, Rating, Publisher, ISSN, and Other Important Details

Published By: SAGE Publications Inc.

Abbreviation: Res. Soc. Work Pract.

Impact Score The impact Score or journal impact score (JIS) is equivalent to Impact Factor. The impact factor (IF) or journal impact factor (JIF) of an academic journal is a scientometric index calculated by Clarivate that reflects the yearly mean number of citations of articles published in the last two years in a given journal, as indexed by Clarivate's Web of Science. On the other hand, Impact Score is based on Scopus data.

Important details.

	Research on Social Work Practice
	Res. Soc. Work Pract.
	Journal
	Social Sciences (miscellaneous) (Q1); Sociology and Political Science (Q1); Psychology (miscellaneous) (Q2); Social Work (Q2)
	1.99
	0.586
	70
	8809
	SAGE Publications Inc.
	United States
	10497315, 15527581
	1991-2022
	Q1
(Last 3 Year)	581

About Research on Social Work Practice

Research on Social Work Practice is a journal published by SAGE Publications Inc. . This journal covers the area[s] related to Social Sciences (miscellaneous), Sociology and Political Science, Psychology (miscellaneous), Social Work, etc . The coverage history of this journal is as follows: 1991-2022. The rank of this journal is 8809 . This journal's impact score, h-index, and SJR are 1.99, 70, and 0.586, respectively. The ISSN of this journal is/are as follows: 10497315, 15527581 . The best quartile of Research on Social Work Practice is Q1 . This journal has received a total of 581 citations during the last three years (Preceding 2022).

Research on Social Work Practice Impact Score 2022-2023

The impact score (IS), also denoted as the Journal impact score (JIS), of an academic journal is a measure of the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is based on Scopus data.

Prediction of Research on Social Work Practice Impact Score 2023

Impact Score 2022 of Research on Social Work Practice is 1.99 . If a similar upward trend continues, IS may increase in 2023 as well.

Impact Score Graph

Check below the impact score trends of research on social work practice. this is based on scopus data..

Year	Impact Score (IS)
2023/2024	Coming Soon
2022	1.99
2021	1.90
2020	1.72
2019	1.30
2018	1.28
2017	1.59
2016	1.42
2015	1.58
2014	1.78

Research on Social Work Practice h-index

The h-index of Research on Social Work Practice is 70 . By definition of the h-index, this journal has at least 70 published articles with more than 70 citations.

What is h-index?

The h-index (also known as the Hirsch index or Hirsh index) is a scientometric parameter used to evaluate the scientific impact of the publications and journals. It is defined as the maximum value of h such that the given Journal has published at least h papers and each has at least h citations.

Research on Social Work Practice ISSN

The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) of Research on Social Work Practice is/are as follows: 10497315, 15527581 .

The ISSN is a unique 8-digit identifier for a specific publication like Magazine or Journal. The ISSN is used in the postal system and in the publishing world to identify the articles that are published in journals, magazines, newsletters, etc. This is the number assigned to your article by the publisher, and it is the one you will use to reference your article within the library catalogues.

ISSN code (also called as "ISSN structure" or "ISSN syntax") can be expressed as follows: NNNN-NNNC Here, N is in the set {0,1,2,3...,9}, a digit character, and C is in {0,1,2,3,...,9,X}

Research on Social Work Practice Ranking and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR)

SCImago Journal Rank is an indicator, which measures the scientific influence of journals. It considers the number of citations received by a journal and the importance of the journals from where these citations come.

Research on Social Work Practice Publisher

The publisher of Research on Social Work Practice is SAGE Publications Inc. . The publishing house of this journal is located in the United States . Its coverage history is as follows: 1991-2022 .

Call For Papers (CFPs)

Please check the official website of this journal to find out the complete details and Call For Papers (CFPs).

Abbreviation

The International Organization for Standardization 4 (ISO 4) abbreviation of Research on Social Work Practice is Res. Soc. Work Pract. . ISO 4 is an international standard which defines a uniform and consistent system for the abbreviation of serial publication titles, which are published regularly. The primary use of ISO 4 is to abbreviate or shorten the names of scientific journals using the technique of List of Title Word Abbreviations (LTWA).

As ISO 4 is an international standard, the abbreviation ('Res. Soc. Work Pract.') can be used for citing, indexing, abstraction, and referencing purposes.

How to publish in Research on Social Work Practice

If your area of research or discipline is related to Social Sciences (miscellaneous), Sociology and Political Science, Psychology (miscellaneous), Social Work, etc. , please check the journal's official website to understand the complete publication process.

Acceptance Rate

• Interest/demand of researchers/scientists for publishing in a specific journal/conference.
• The complexity of the peer review process and timeline.
• Time taken from draft submission to final publication.
• Number of submissions received and acceptance slots
• And Many More.

The simplest way to find out the acceptance rate or rejection rate of a Journal/Conference is to check with the journal's/conference's editorial team through emails or through the official website.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

What is the impact score of research on social work practice.

The latest impact score of Research on Social Work Practice is 1.99. It is computed in the year 2023.

What is the h-index of Research on Social Work Practice?

The latest h-index of Research on Social Work Practice is 70. It is evaluated in the year 2023.

What is the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of Research on Social Work Practice?

The latest SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) of Research on Social Work Practice is 0.586. It is calculated in the year 2023.

What is the ranking of Research on Social Work Practice?

The latest ranking of Research on Social Work Practice is 8809. This ranking is among 27955 Journals, Conferences, and Book Series. It is computed in the year 2023.

Who is the publisher of Research on Social Work Practice?

Research on Social Work Practice is published by SAGE Publications Inc.. The publication country of this journal is United States.

What is the abbreviation of Research on Social Work Practice?

This standard abbreviation of Research on Social Work Practice is Res. Soc. Work Pract..

Is "Research on Social Work Practice" a Journal, Conference or Book Series?

Research on Social Work Practice is a journal published by SAGE Publications Inc..

What is the scope of Research on Social Work Practice?

• Social Sciences (miscellaneous)
• Sociology and Political Science
• Psychology (miscellaneous)
• Social Work

For detailed scope of Research on Social Work Practice, check the official website of this journal.

What is the ISSN of Research on Social Work Practice?

The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) of Research on Social Work Practice is/are as follows: 10497315, 15527581.

What is the best quartile for Research on Social Work Practice?

The best quartile for Research on Social Work Practice is Q1.

What is the coverage history of Research on Social Work Practice?

The coverage history of Research on Social Work Practice is as follows 1991-2022.

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• Scimago Journal & Country Rank (SJR), https://www.scimagojr.com/
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Note: The impact score shown here is equivalent to the average number of times documents published in a journal/conference in the past two years have been cited in the current year (i.e., Cites / Doc. (2 years)). It is based on Scopus data and can be a little higher or different compared to the impact factor (IF) produced by Journal Citation Report. Please refer to the Web of Science data source to check the exact journal impact factor ™ (Thomson Reuters) metric.

Impact Score, SJR, h-Index, and Other Important metrics of These Journals, Conferences, and Book Series

Journal/Conference/Book Title	Type	Publisher	Ranking	SJR	h-index	Impact Score

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Research on Social Work Practice Impact Score (IS) Trend

Year	Impact Score (IS)
2023/2024	Updated Soon
2022	1.99
2021	1.90
2020	1.72
2019	1.30
2018	1.28
2017	1.59
2016	1.42
2015	1.58
2014	1.78

Top Journals/Conferences in Social Sciences (miscellaneous)

Top journals/conferences in sociology and political science, top journals/conferences in psychology (miscellaneous), top journals/conferences in social work.

Research on Social Work Practice

Journal Abbreviation: RES SOCIAL WORK PRAC Journal ISSN: 1049-7315

Year	Impact Factor (IF)	Total Articles	Total Cites
2023 (2024 update)	1.7	-	-
2022	1.8	-	2720
2021	1.984	-	2865
2020	2.236	106	2820
2019	1.188	82	2015
2018	1.270	83	2026
2017	1.929	82	2031
2016	1.586	70	1752
2015	1.216	70	1411
2014	1.375	63	1281
2013	0.905	62	1017
2012		-	-
2011		-	-
2010		-	-

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The Pursuit of Quality for Social Work Practice: Three Generations and Counting

Enola proctor.

Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at Washington University in St. Louis

Social work addresses some of the most complex and intractable human and social problems: poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and child abuse. Our field may be distinct among professions for its efforts to ameliorate the toughest societal problems, experienced by society’s most vulnerable, while working from under-resourced institutions and settings. Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for rigorous assessment and evaluation.

Moreover, social work confronts these challenges as it is ethically bound to deliver high-quality services. Policy and regulatory requirements increasingly demand that social work deliver and document the effectiveness of highest quality interventions and restrict reimbursement to those services that are documented as evidence based. Social work’s future, its very survival, depends on our ability to deliver services with a solid base of evidence and to document their effectiveness. In the words of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW; n.d.) , social work seeks to “champion social progress powered by science.” The research community needs to support practice through innovative and rigorous science that advances the evidence for interventions to address social work’s grand challenges.

My work seeks to improve the quality of social work practice by pursuing answers to three questions:

• What interventions and services are most effective and thus should be delivered in social work practice?
• How do we measure the impact of those interventions and services? (That is, what outcomes do our interventions achieve?)
• How do we implement the highest quality interventions?

This paper describes this work, demonstrates the substantive and methodological progression across the three questions, assesses what we have learned, and forecasts a research agenda for what we still need to learn. Given Aaron Rosen’s role as my PhD mentor and our many years of collaboration, the paper also addresses the role of research mentoring in advancing our profession’s knowledge base.

What Interventions and Services Are Most Effective?

Answering the question “What services are effective?” requires rigorous testing of clearly specified interventions. The first paper I coauthored with Aaron Rosen—“Specifying the Treatment Process: The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 )—provided a framework for evaluating intervention effectiveness. At that time, process and outcomes were jumbled and intertwined concepts. Social work interventions were rarely specified beyond theoretical orientation or level of focus: casework (or direct practice); group work; and macro practice, which included community, agency-level, and policy-focused practice. Moreover, interventions were not named, nor were their components clearly identified. We recognized that gross descriptions of interventions obstruct professional training, preclude fidelity assessment, and prevent accurate tests of effectiveness. Thus, in a series of papers, Rosen and I advocated that social work interventions be specified, clearly labeled, and operationally defined, measured, and tested.

Specifying Interventions

Such specification of interventions is essential to two professional responsibilities: professional education and demonstrating the effectiveness of the field’s interventions. Without specification, interventions cannot be taught. Social work education is all about equipping students with skills to deliver interventions, programs, services, administrative practices, and policies. Teaching interventions requires an ability to name, define, see them in action, measure their presence (or absence), assess the fidelity with which they are delivered, and give feedback to students on how to increase or refine the associated skills.

To advance testing the effectiveness of social work interventions, we drew distinctions between interventions and outcomes and proposed these two constructs as the foci for effectiveness research. We defined interventions as practitioner behaviors that can be volitionally manipulated by practitioners (used or not, varied in intensity and timing), that are defined in detail, can be reliably measured, and can be linked to specific identified outcomes ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ; Rosen & Proctor, 1981 ). This definition foreshadowed the development of treatment manuals, lists of specific evidence-based practices, and calls for monitoring intervention fidelity. Recognizing the variety of intervention types, and to advance their more precise definition and measurement, we proposed that interventions be distinguished in terms of their complexity. Interventive responses comprise discrete or single responses, such as affirmation, expression of empathy, or positive reinforcement. Interventive strategies comprise several different actions that are, together, linked to a designated outcome, such as motivational interviewing. Most complex are interventive programs , which are a variety of intervention actions organized and integrated as a total treatment package; collaborative care for depression or community assertive treatment are examples. To strengthen the professional knowledge base, we also called for social work effectiveness research to begin testing the optimal dose and sequencing of intervention components in relation to attainment of desired outcomes.

Advancing Intervention Effectiveness Research

Our “specifying paper” also was motivated by the paucity of literature at that time on actual social work interventions. Our literature review of 13 major social work journals over 5 years of published research revealed that only 15% of published social work research addressed interventions. About a third of studies described social problems, and about half explored factors associated with the problem ( Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). Most troubling was our finding that only 3% of articles described the intervention or its components in sufficient detail for replication in either research or practice. Later, Fraser (2004) found intervention research to comprise only about one fourth of empirical studies in social work. Fortunately, our situation has improved. Intervention research is more frequent in social work publications, thanks largely to the publication policies of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and Research on Social Work Practice .

Research Priorities

Social work faces important and formidable challenges as it advances research on intervention effectiveness. The practitioner who searches the literature or various intervention lists can find more than 500 practices that are named or that are shown to have evidence from rigorous trials that passes a bar to qualify as evidence-based practices. However, our profession still lacks any organized compendium or taxonomy of interventions that are employed in or found to be effective for social work practice. Existing lists of evidence-based practices, although necessary, are insufficient for social work for several reasons. First, as a 2015 National Academies Institute of Medicine (IOM) report—“Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards” ( IOM, 2015 )—concluded, too few evidence-based practices have been found to be appropriate for low-resource settings or acceptable to minority groups. Second, existing interventions do not adequately reflect the breadth of social work practice. We have too few evidence-based interventions that can inform effective community organization, case management, referral practice, resource development, administrative practice, or policy. Noting that there is far less literature on evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice, a social work task force responding to the 2015 IOM report recommended that this gap be a target of our educational and research efforts ( National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work, 2016 ). And finally, our field—along with other professions that deliver psychosocial interventions—lacks the kinds of procedure codes that can identify the specific interventions we deliver. Documenting social work activities in agency records is increasingly essential for quality assurance and third-party reimbursement.

Future Directions: Research to Advance Evidence on Interventions

Social work has critically important research needs. Our field needs to advance the evidence base on what interventions work for social work populations, practices, and settings. Responding to the 2015 IOM report, the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) identified as a social work priority the development and testing of evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice. As we advance our intervention effectiveness research, we must respond to the challenge of determining the key mechanisms of change ( National Institute of Mental Health, 2016 ) and identify key modifiable components of packaged interventions ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). We need to explore the optimal dosage, ordering, or adapted bundling of intervention elements and advance robust, feasible ways to measure and increase fidelity ( Jaccard, 2016 ). We also need to conduct research on which interventions are most appropriate, acceptable, and effective with various client groups ( Zayas, 2003 ; Videka, 2003 ).

Documenting the Impact of Interventions: Specifying and Measuring Outcomes

Outcomes are key to documenting the impact of social work interventions. My 1978 “specifying” paper with Rosen emphasized that the effectiveness of social work practice could not be adequately evaluated without clear specification and measurement of various types of outcomes. In that paper, we argued that the profession cannot rely only on an assertion of effectiveness. The field must also calibrate, calculate, and communicate its impact.

The nursing profession’s highly successful campaign, based on outcomes research, positioned that field to claim that “nurses save lives.” Nurse staffing ratios were associated with in-hospital and 30-day mortality, independent of patient characteristics, hospital characteristics, or medical treatment ( Person et al., 2004 ). In contrast, social work has often described—sometimes advertised—itself as the low-cost profession. The claim of “cheapest service” may have some strategic advantage in turf competition with other professions. But social work can do better. Our research base can and should demonstrate the value of our work by naming and quantifying the outcomes—the added value of social work interventions.

As a start to this work—a beginning step in compiling evidence about the impact of social work interventions—our team set out to identify the outcomes associated with social work practice. We felt that identifying and naming outcomes is essential for conveying what social work is about. Moreover, outcomes should serve as the focus for evaluating the effectiveness of social work interventions.

We produced two taxonomies of outcomes reflected in published evaluations of social work interventions ( Proctor, Rosen, & Rhee, 2002 ; Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). They included such outcomes as change in clients’ social functioning, resource procurement, problem or symptom reduction, and safety. They exemplify the importance of naming and measuring what our profession can contribute to society. Although social work’s growing body of effectiveness research typically reports outcomes of the interventions being tested, the literature has not, in the intervening 20 years, addressed the collective set of outcomes for our field.

Fortunately, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (AASWSW, n.d.) now provide a framework for communicating social work’s goals. They reflect social work’s added value: improving individual and family well-being, strengthening social fabric, and helping to create a more just society. The Grand Challenges for Social Work include ensuring healthy development for all youth, closing the health gap, stopping family violence, advancing long and productive lives, eradicating social isolation, ending homelessness, creating social responses to a changing environment, harnessing technology for social good, promoting smart decarceration, reducing extreme economic inequality, building financial capability for all, and achieving equal opportunity and justice ( AASWSW, n.d. ).

These important goals appropriately reflect much of what we are all about in social work, and our entire field has been galvanized—energized by the power of these grand challenges. However, the grand challenges require setting specific benchmarks—targets that reflect how far our professional actions can expect to take us, or in some areas, how far we have come in meeting the challenge.

For the past decade, care delivery systems and payment reforms have required measures for tracking performance. Quality measures have become critical tools for all service providers and organizations ( IOM, 2015 ). The IOM defines quality of care as “the degree to which … services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired … outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” ( Lohr, 1990 , p. 21). Quality measures are important at multiple levels of service delivery: at the client level, at the practitioner level, at the organization level, and at the policy level. The National Quality Forum has established five criteria for quality measures: They should address (a) the most important, (b) the most scientifically valid, (c) the most feasible or least burdensome, (d) the most usable, and (e) the most harmonious set of measures ( IOM, 2015 .) Quality measures have been advanced by accrediting groups (e.g., the Joint Commission of the National Committee for Quality Assurance), professional societies, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, quality measures are lacking for key areas of social work practice, including mental health and substance-use treatment. And of the 55 nationally endorsed measures related to mental health and substance use, only two address a psychosocial intervention. Measures used for accreditation and certification purposes often reflect structural capabilities of organizations and their resource use, not the infrastructure required to deliver high-quality services ( IOM, 2015 ). I am not aware of any quality measure developed by our own professional societies or agreed upon across our field.

Future Directions: Research on Quality Monitoring and Measure Development

Although social work as a field lacks a strong tradition of measuring and assessing quality ( Megivern et al., 2007 ; McMillen et al., 2005 ; Proctor, Powell, & McMillen, 2012 ), social work’s role in the quality workforce is becoming better understood ( McMillen & Raffol, 2016 ). The small number of established and endorsed quality measures reflects both limitations in the evidence for effective interventions and challenges in obtaining the detailed information necessary to support quality measurement ( IOM, 2015 ). According to the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) , developing quality measures to capture use of evidence-based interventions is essential for the survival of social work practice in many settings. The task force recommends that social work organizations develop relevant and viable quality measures and that social workers actively influence the implementation of quality measures in their practice settings.

How to Implement Evidence-Based Care

A third and more recent focus of my work addresses this question: How do we implement evidence-based care in agencies and communities? Despite our progress in developing proven interventions, most clients—whether served by social workers or other providers—do not receive evidence-based care. A growing number of studies are assessing the extent to which clients—in specific settings or communities—receive evidence-based interventions. Kohl, Schurer, and Bellamy (2009) examined quality in a core area of social work: training for parents at risk for child maltreatment. The team examined the parent services and their level of empirical support in community agencies, staffed largely by master’s-level social workers. Of 35 identified treatment programs offered to families, only 11% were “well-established empirically supported interventions,” with another 20% containing some hallmarks of empirically supported interventions ( Kohl et al., 2009 ). This study reveals a sizable implementation gap, with most of the programs delivered lacking scientific validation.

Similar quality gaps are apparent in other settings where social workers deliver services. Studies show that only 19.3% of school mental health professionals and 36.8% of community mental health professionals working in Virginia’s schools and community mental health centers report using any evidence-based substance-abuse prevention programs ( Evans, Koch, Brady, Meszaros, & Sadler, 2013 ). In mental health, where social workers have long delivered the bulk of services, only 40% to 50% of people with mental disorders receive any treatment ( Kessler, Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005 ; Merikangas et al., 2011 ), and of those receiving treatment, a fraction receive what could be considered “quality” treatment ( Wang, Demler, & Kessler, 2002 ; Wang et al., 2005 ). These and other studies indicate that, despite progress in developing proven interventions, most clients do not receive evidence-based care. In light of the growth of evidence-based practice, this fact is troubling evidence that testing interventions and publishing the findings is not sufficient to improve quality.

So, how do we get these interventions in place? What is needed to enable social workers to deliver, and clients to receive, high-quality care? In addition to developing and testing evidence-based interventions, what else is needed to improve the quality of social work practice? My work has focused on advancing quality of services through two paths.

Making Effective Interventions Accessible to Providers: Intervention Reviews and Taxonomies

First, we have advocated that research evidence be synthesized and made available to front-line practitioners. In a research-active field where new knowledge is constantly produced, practitioners should not be expected to rely on journal publications alone for information about effective approaches to achieve desired outcomes. Mastering a rapidly expanding professional evidence base has been characterized as a nearly unachievable challenge for practitioners ( Greenfield, 2017 ). Reviews should critique and clarify the intervention’s effectiveness as tested in specific settings, populations, and contexts, answering the question, “What works where, and with whom?” Even more valuable are studies of comparative effectiveness—those that answer, “Which intervention approach works better, where, and when?”

Taxonomies of clearly and consistently labeled interventions will enhance their accessibility and the usefulness of research reports and systematic reviews. A pre-requisite is the consistent naming of interventions. A persistent challenge is the wide variation in names or labels for interventive procedures and programs. Our professional activities are the basis for our societal sanction, and they must be capable of being accurately labeled and documented if we are to describe what our profession “does” to advance social welfare. Increasingly, and in short order, that documentation will be in electronic records that are scrutinized by third parties for purposes of reimbursement and assessment of value toward outcome attainment.

How should intervention research and reviews be organized? Currently, several websites provide lists of evidence-based practices, some with links, citations, or information about dissemination and implementation organizations that provide training and facilitation to adopters. Practitioners and administrators find such lists helpful but often note the challenge in determining which are most appropriate for their needs. In the words of one agency leader, “The drug companies are great at presenting [intervention information] in a very easy form to use. We don’t have people coming and saying, ‘Ah, let me tell you about the best evidence-based practice for cognitive behavioral therapy for depression,’” ( Proctor et al., 2007 , p. 483). We have called for the field to devise decision aids for practitioners to enhance access to the best available empirical knowledge about interventions ( Proctor et al., 2002 ; Proctor & Rosen, 2008 ; Rosen et al., 2003 ). We proposed that intervention taxonomies be organized around outcomes pursued in social work practice, and we developed such a taxonomy based on eight domains of outcomes—those most frequently tested in social work journals. Given the field’s progress in identifying its grand challenges, its associated outcomes could well serve as the organizing focus, with research-tested interventions listed for each challenge. Compiling the interventions, programs, and services that are shown—through research—to help achieve one of the challenges would surely advance our field.

We further urged profession-wide efforts to develop social work practice guidelines from intervention taxonomies ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Practice guidelines are systematically compiled, critiqued, and organized statements about the effectiveness of interventions that are organized in a way to help practitioners select and use the most effective and appropriate approaches for addressing client problems and pursuing desired outcomes.

At that time, we proposed that our published taxonomy of social work interventions could provide a beginning architecture for social work guidelines ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). In 2000, we organized a conference for thought leaders in social work practice. This talented group wrestled with and formulated recommendations for tackling the professional, research, and training requisites to developing social work practice guidelines to enable researchers to access and apply the best available knowledge about interventions ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Fifteen years later, however, the need remains for social work to synthesize its intervention research. Psychology and psychiatry, along with most fields of medical practice, have developed practice guidelines. Although their acceptance and adherence is fraught with challenges, guidelines make evidence more accessible and enable quality monitoring. Yet, guidelines still do not exist for social work.

The 2015 IOM report, “Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards,” includes a conclusion that information on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions is not routinely available to service consumers, providers, and payers, nor is it synthesized. That 2015 IOM report called for systematic reviews to inform clinical guidelines for psychosocial interventions. This report defined psychosocial interventions broadly, encompassing “interpersonal or informational activities, techniques, or strategies that target biological, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, social, or environmental factors with the aim of reducing symptoms and improving functioning or well-being” ( IOM, 2015 , p. 5). These interventions are social work’s domain; they are delivered in the very settings where social workers dominate (behavioral health, schools, criminal justice, child welfare, and immigrant services); and they encompass populations across the entire lifespan within all sociodemographic groups and vulnerable populations. Accordingly, the National Task Force on Evidence Based Practice in Social Work (2016) has recommended the conduct of more systematic reviews of the evidence supporting social work interventions.

If systematic reviews are to lead to guidelines for evidence-based psychosocial interventions, social work needs to be at the table, and social work research must provide the foundation. Whether social work develops its own guidelines or helps lead the development of profession-independent guidelines as recommended by the IOM committee, guidelines need to be detailed enough to guide practice. That is, they need to be accompanied by treatment manuals and informed by research that details the effect of moderator variables and contextual factors reflecting diverse clientele, social determinants of health, and setting resource challenges. The IOM report “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust” sets criteria for guideline development processes ( IOM, 2011 ). Moreover, social work systematic reviews of research and any associated evidence-based guidelines need to be organized around meaningful taxonomies.

Advancing the Science of Implementation

As a second path to ensuring the delivery of high-quality care, my research has focused on advancing the science of implementation. Implementation research seeks to inform how to deliver evidence-based interventions, programs, and policies into real-world settings so their benefits can be realized and sustained. The ultimate aim of implementation research is building a base of evidence about the most effective processes and strategies for improving service delivery. Implementation research builds upon effectiveness research then seeks to discover how to use specific implementation strategies and move those interventions into specific settings, extending their availability, reach, and benefits to clients and communities. Accordingly, implementation strategies must address the challenges of the service system (e.g., specialty mental health, schools, criminal justice system, health settings) and practice settings (e.g., community agency, national employee assistance programs, office-based practice), and the human capital challenge of staff training and support.

In an approach that echoes themes in an early paper, “Specifying the Treatment Process—The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ), my work once again tackled the challenge of specifying a heretofore vague process—this time, not the intervention process, but the implementation process. As a first step, our team developed a taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), which enable a direct test of whether or not a given intervention is adopted and delivered. Although it is overlooked in other types of research, implementation science focuses on this distinct type of outcome. Explicit examination of implementation outcomes is key to an important research distinction. Often, evaluations yield disappointing results about an intervention, showing that the expected and desired outcomes are not attained. This might mean that the intervention was not effective. However, just as likely, it could mean that the intervention was not actually delivered, or it was not delivered with fidelity. Implementation outcomes help identify the roadblocks on the way to intervention adoption and delivery.

Our 2011 taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), became the framework for two national repositories of measures for implementation research: the Seattle Implementation Research Collaborative ( Lewis et al., 2015 ) and the National Institutes of Health GEM measures database ( Rabin et al., 2012 ). These repositories of implementation outcomes seek to harmonize and increase the rigor of measurement in implementation science.

We also have developed taxonomies of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2012 ; Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 , 2015) . Implementation strategies are interventions for system change—how organizations, communities, and providers can learn to deliver new and more effective practices ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

A conversation with a key practice leader stimulated my interest in implementation strategies. Shortly after our school endorsed an MSW curriculum emphasizing evidence-based practices, a pioneering CEO of a major social service agency in St. Louis met with me and asked,

Enola Proctor, I get the importance of delivering evidence based practices. My organization delivers over 20 programs and interventions, and I believe only a handful of them are really evidence based. I want to decrease our provision of ineffective care, and increase our delivery of evidence-based practices. But how? What are the evidence-based ways I, as an agency director, can transform my agency so that we can deliver evidence-based practices?

That agency director was asking a question of how . He was asking for evidence-based implementation strategies. Moving effective programs and practices into routine care settings requires the skillful use of implementation strategies, defined as systematic “methods or techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of a clinical program or practice into routine service” ( Proctor et al., 2013 , p. 2).

This question has shaped my work for the past 15 years, as well as the research priorities of several funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the World Health Organization. Indeed, a National Institutes of Health program announcement—Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health ( National Institutes of Health, 2016 )—identified the discovery of effective implementation strategies as a primary purpose of implementation science. To date, the implementation science literature cannot yet answer that important question, but we are making progress.

To identify implementation strategies, our teams first turned to the literature—a literature that we found to be scattered across a wide range of journals and disciplines. Most articles were not empirical, and most articles used widely differing terms to characterize implementation strategies. We conducted a structured literature review to generate common nomenclature and a taxonomy of implementation strategies. That review yielded 63 distinct implementation strategies, which fell into six groupings: planning, educating, financing, restructuring, managing quality, and attending to policy context ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

Our team refined that compilation, using Delphi techniques and concept mapping to develop conceptually distinct categories of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 ). The refined compilation of 73 discrete implementation strategies was then further organized into nine clusters:

• changing agency infrastructure,
• using financial strategies,
• supporting clinicians,
• providing interactive assistance,
• training and educating stakeholders,
• adapting and tailoring interventions to context,
• developing stakeholder relationships,
• using evaluative and iterative strategies, and
• engaging consumers.

These taxonomies of implementation strategies position the field for more robust research on implementation processes. The language used to describe implementation strategies has not yet “gelled” and has been described as a “Tower of Babel” ( McKibbon et al., 2010 ). Therefore, we also developed guidelines for reporting the components of strategies ( Proctor et al., 2013 ) so researchers and implementers would have more behaviorally specific information about what a strategy is, who does it, when, and for how long. The value of such reporting guidelines is illustrated in the work of Gold and colleagues (2016) .

What have we learned, through our own program of research on implementation strategies—the “how to” of improving practice? First, we have been able to identify from practice-based evidence the implementation strategies used most often. Using novel activity logs to track implementation strategies, Bunger and colleagues (2017) found that strategies such as quality improvement tools, using data experts, providing supervision, and sending clinical reminders were frequently used to facilitate delivery of behavioral health interventions within a child-welfare setting and were perceived by agency leadership as contributing to project success.

Second, reflecting the complexity of quality improvement processes, we have learned that there is no magic bullet ( Powell, Proctor, & Glass, 2013 ). Our study of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinics working to implement evidence-based HIV treatment found that implementers used an average of 25 (plus or minus 14) different implementation strategies ( Rogal, et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the number of implementation strategies used was positively associated with the number of new treatment starts. These findings suggest that implementing new interventions requires considerable effort and resources.

To advance our understanding of the effectiveness of implementation strategies, our teams have conducted a systematic review ( Powell et al., 2013 ), tested specific strategies, and captured practice-based evidence from on-the-ground implementers. Testing the effectiveness of implementation strategies has been identified as a top research priority by the IOM (2009) . In work with Charles Glisson in St. Louis, our 15-agency-based randomized clinical trial found that an organizational-focused intervention—the attachment, regulatory, and competency model—improved agency culture and climate, stimulated more clinicians to enroll in evidence-based-practice training, and boosted clinical effect sizes of various evidence-based practices ( Glisson, Williams, Hemmelgarn, Proctor, & Green, 2016a , 2016b ). And in a hospital critical care unit, the implementation strategies of developing a team, selecting and using champions, provider education sessions, and audit and feedback helped increase team adherence to phlebotomy guidelines ( Steffen et al., in press ).

We are also learning about the value of different strategies. Experts in implementation science and implementation practice identified as most important the strategies of “use evaluate and iterative approaches” and “train and educate stakeholders.” Reported as less helpful were such strategies as “access new funding streams” and “remind clinicians of practices to use” ( Waltz et al., 2015 ). Successful implementers in Veterans Affairs clinics relied more heavily on such strategies as “change physical structures and equipment” and “facilitate relay of clinical data to providers” than did less successful implementers ( Rogal et al., 2017 ).

Many strategies have yet to be investigated empirically, as has the role of dissemination and implementation organizations—organizations that function to promote, provide information about, provide training in, and scale up specific treatments. Most evidence-based practices used in behavioral health, including most listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Registry of Promising and Effective Practices, are disseminated and distributed by dissemination and implementation organizations. Unlike drugs and devices, psychosocial interventions have no Federal Drug Administration-like delivery system. Kreuter and Casey (2012) urge better understanding and use of the intervention “delivery system,” or mechanisms to bring treatment discoveries to the attention of practitioners and into use in practice settings.

Implementation strategies have been shown to boost clinical effectiveness ( Glisson et al., 2010 ), reduce staff turnover ( Aarons, Sommerfield, Hect, Silvosky, & Chaffin, 2009 ) and help reduce disparities in care ( Balicer et al., 2015 ).

Future directions: Research on implementation strategies

My work in implementation science has helped build intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field. Yet, we continue to lack understanding of many issues. What strategies are used in usual implementation practice, by whom, for which empirically supported interventions? What strategies are effective in which organizational and policy contexts? Which strategies are effective in attaining which specific implementation outcomes? For example, are the strategies that are effective for initial adoption also effective for scale up, spread, and sustained use of interventions? Social workers have the skill set for roles as implementation facilitators, and refining packages of implementation strategies that are effective in social service and behavioral health settings could boost the visibility, scale, and impact of our work.

The Third Generation and Counting

Social work faces grand, often daunting challenges. We need to develop a more robust base of evidence about the effectiveness of interventions and make that evidence more relevant, accessible, and applicable to social work practitioners, whether they work in communities, agencies, policy arenas, or a host of novel settings. We need to advance measurement-based care so our value as a field is recognized. We need to know how to bring proven interventions to scale for population-level impact. We need to discover ways to build capacity of social service agencies and the communities in which they reside. And we need to learn how to sustain advances in care once we achieve them ( Proctor et al., 2015 ). Our challenges are indeed grand, far outstripping our resources.

So how dare we speak of a quality quest? Does it not seem audacious to seek the highest standards in caring for the most vulnerable, especially in an era when we face a new political climate that threatens vulnerable groups and promises to strip resources from health and social services? Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for assessment and evaluation. Quality may be an audacious goal, but as social workers we can pursue no less. By virtue of our code of ethics, our commitment to equity, and our skills in intervening on multiple levels of systems and communities, social workers are ideally suited for advancing quality.

Who will conduct the needed research? Who will pioneer its translation to improving practice? Social work practice can be only as strong as its research base; the responsibility for developing that base, and hence improve practice, is lodged within social work research.

If my greatest challenge is pursuing this quest, my greatest joy is in mentoring the next generation for this work. My research mentoring has always been guided by the view that the ultimate purpose of research in the helping professions is the production and systemization of knowledge for use by practitioners ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). For 27 years, the National Institute of Mental Health has supported training in mental health services research based in the Center for Mental Health Services Research ( Hasche, Perron, & Proctor, 2009 ; Proctor & McMillen, 2008 ). And, with colleague John Landsverk, we are launching my sixth year leading the Implementation Research Institute, a training program for implementation science supported by the National Institute of Mental Health ( Proctor et al., 2013 ). We have trained more than 50 social work, psychology, anthropology, and physician researchers in implementation science for mental health. With three more cohorts to go, we are working to assess what works in research training for implementation science. Using bibliometric analysis, we have learned that intensive training and mentoring increases research productivity in the form of published papers and grants that address how to implement evidence-based care in mental health and addictions. And, through use of social network analysis, we have learned that every “dose” of mentoring increases scholarly collaboration when measured two years later ( Luke, Baumann, Carothers, Landsverk, & Proctor, 2016 ).

As his student, I was privileged to learn lessons in mentoring from Aaron Rosen. He treated his students as colleagues, he invited them in to work on the most challenging of questions, and he pursued his work with joy. When he treated me as a colleague, I felt empowered. When he invited me to work with him on the field’s most vexing challenges, I felt inspired. And as he worked with joy, I learned that work pursued with joy doesn’t feel like work at all. And now the third, fourth, and fifth generations of social work researchers are pursuing tough challenges and the quality quest for social work practice. May seasoned and junior researchers work collegially and with joy, tackling the profession’s toughest research challenges, including the quest for high-quality social work services.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by IRI (5R25MH0809160), Washington University ICTS (2UL1 TR000448-08), Center for Mental Health Services Research, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Center for Dissemination and Implementation, Institute for Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis.

This invited article is based on the 2017 Aaron Rosen Lecture presented by Enola Proctor at the Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference—“Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth”—held January 11–15, 2017, in New Orleans, LA. The annual Aaron Rosen Lecture features distinguished scholars who have accumulated a body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, the research base for practice, or effective utilization of research in practice.

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10		journal	0.878 Q1	98	197	589	11888	1635	570	2.72	60.35	65.66
11		journal	0.847 Q1	101	196	306	11173	852	303	2.72	57.01	69.57
12		journal	0.840 Q1	81	91	144	4703	410	143	2.56	51.68	48.57
13		journal	0.839 Q1	45	62	116	3484	371	104	3.09	56.19	82.07
14		journal	0.833 Q1	53	191	268	7905	826	246	2.06	41.39	61.37
15		journal	0.830 Q2	81	41	1253	2170	3166	1252	2.24	52.93	64.47
16		journal	0.726 Q2	82	42	141	1068	340	105	1.40	25.43	61.54
17		journal	0.716 Q2	94	212	592	7100	1360	569	2.19	33.49	68.38
18		journal	0.713 Q2	51	20	118	1010	291	116	2.26	50.50	70.89
19		journal	0.711 Q2	50	209	295	10212	783	286	2.14	48.86	68.74
20		journal	0.702 Q2	40	70	151	2435	353	120	1.94	34.79	78.68
21		journal	0.676 Q2	65	132	249	5523	563	228	1.86	41.84	78.29
22		journal	0.669 Q2	38	37	183	1746	464	182	2.06	47.19	63.77
23		journal	0.665 Q2	75	112	240	7009	520	226	2.20	62.58	62.56
24		journal	0.657 Q2	57	54	120	3109	309	108	2.38	57.57	62.60
25		journal	0.656 Q2	75	161	268	9397	663	267	2.10	58.37	71.30
26		journal	0.651 Q2	51	107	197	7227	474	191	2.06	67.54	67.05
27		journal	0.620 Q2	55	106	294	4821	651	257	2.10	45.48	70.82
28		journal	0.601 Q2	42	58	185	2951	420	184	1.86	50.88	66.30
29		journal	0.599 Q3	68	176	182	9153	453	178	2.49	52.01	73.01
30		journal	0.581 Q3	51	79	247	2933	555	167	1.27	37.13	67.34
31		journal	0.569 Q3	34	131	256	5740	554	239	1.92	43.82	67.99
32		journal	0.510 Q3	45	74	201	3742	374	200	2.02	50.57	56.89
33		journal	0.487 Q3	29	33	114	692	154	64	1.01	20.97	66.04
34		journal	0.469 Q3	37	58	99	2678	168	97	1.52	46.17	73.65
35		journal	0.461 Q3	19	20	73	991	116	73	1.59	49.55	35.00
36		journal	0.453 Q3	67	18	58	1937	99	56	1.33	107.61	70.69
37		journal	0.450 Q3	54	88	124	3995	193	112	1.40	45.40	72.24
38		journal	0.428 Q3	27	41	119	2282	168	119	1.36	55.66	63.04
39		journal	0.418 Q3	60	27	82	1156	130	74	1.27	42.81	63.44
40		journal	0.401 Q3	37	37	112	1440	162	93	1.34	38.92	67.53
41		journal	0.395 Q3	62	36	113	349	148	101	1.19	9.69	75.00
42		journal	0.378 Q4	51	42	157	1646	199	127	0.89	39.19	70.97
43		journal	0.350 Q4	33	44	97	1825	116	91	0.99	41.48	81.08
44		journal	0.315 Q4	25	25	46	1167	60	46	1.47	46.68	68.85
45		journal	0.299 Q4	28	11	69	444	59	56	0.64	40.36	77.78
46		journal	0.283 Q4	14	20	67	839	50	58	0.80	41.95	50.00
47		journal	0.270 Q4	26	25	87	1281	74	79	0.95	51.24	48.78
48		journal	0.269 Q4	12	25	89	933	81	89	0.88	37.32	72.22
49		journal	0.261 Q4	12	21	50	1013	49	42	0.53	48.24	57.45
50		journal	0.256 Q4	29	48	92	1921	82	84	0.91	40.02	61.65

Follow us on @ScimagoJR Scimago Lab , Copyright 2007-2024. Data Source: Scopus®

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