The Social Work TIG encourages social workers and evaluators of social work practice to join the AEA and collaborate with evaluators from other disciplines to develop and promote evaluation approaches that support social work practitioners and programs.
The pressure to demonstrate effectiveness has continued to increase, and in response, there has been a growing interest in evidence-based practice and other strategies for evaluating social work programs.
Development
At the 1999 AEA conference, a roundtable session on social work evaluation was held, during which participants unanimously agreed to work toward establishing a Social Work TIG with AEA. The TIG was established at the 2001 conference and held its first business meeting in 2002.
Purpose
The overall purpose of the TIG is to provide a focal point for AEA members who are social worker practitioners, instructors, researchers, and evaluators of social work programs in order to:
- Improve evaluation practices and methods within social work
- Increase evaluation use in social work practice
- Promote evaluation as a profession that has much to offer social workers
- Support the contribution of evaluation to the generation of theory and knowledge about effective human action, including social work practice
- Promote AEA amongst colleagues interested in the evaluation of social work practice, and to encourage them to join AEA in order to develop the TIG’s purposes
- Promote resources for social workers to pursue evaluation research
- Improve teaching of evaluation in social work education
- Improve resources for evaluation training for social workers
- Support collaboration and understanding between social workers and evaluators of social work programs
We encourage the development of evaluation practices and methods relevant to social work practice. In this process, we are inclusive in promoting all evaluation research paradigms (e.g., empirical, interpretivist, pragmatist, and realist) to enhance the effectiveness of social work practice.
In social work, there is a direct relationship between evaluation research and the development of our field's knowledge and practice, informed by its findings. This trend is exemplified by the two major related movements, empirical clinical practice and evidence-based practice. The Social Work TIG helps to develop these movements and to promote the overall contribution of evaluation in this regard.