Overview

The Research Methods Consortium created this textbook specifically for doctoral students in social work.  The book aims to present information relevant to doctoral studies, at the doctoral level, with a focus on social work research and values.  Unlike research methods texts for BSW and MSW students, this text emphasizes producing rather than consuming research for evidence based practice. In addition, it omits content that doctoral students will receive in other courses such as bivariate statistical analysis and detailed qualitative methods.

Tailoring a textbook for social work doctoral students was important to us in this project. However, we also wanted to empower doctoral students as future leaders in higher education to use, create, license, and distribute open educational resources (OER). The creation process taught students about OER and Open Pedagogy, empowered them to participate in guiding their own educational experiences, allowed them to be creative and independent, and provided infrastructure for sharing the fruits of their efforts with others.

Lastly, this textbook is freely available and is intended to save money for social work doctoral students.  At The University of Texas at Arlington, using this textbook saves students $230 compared to the previously required textbooks. We recognize that PhD students often come to their doctoral studies as practicing social workers and salaries for social workers tend to be lower than many other professionals (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2020). This can results in cohorts of PhD students who have may not have accumulated substantial savings to support their educational endeavors. We see this OER text book as a contribution to social justice in that it makes learning more accessible to a wide spectrum of students.

Creation Process

This book was created in an Open Pedagogy project led by Dr. Rebecca Mauldin and PhD students in SOCW 6340, Advanced Research Methods, at The University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Social Work. We used the OER textbook Graduate Research Methods in Social Work by Decarlo, Cummings, and Agnelli (2020)^[1] as the source material for this textbook. First semester PhD students read the source textbook, other OER materials, and commercial textbooks (notably Rubin & Babbie, 2017)^[2] and watched pre-recorded video lectures outside of class to build foundational knowledge in research methods. During class time, the students edited the source textbook and created new material including adding advanced content for a deeper understanding of research methods and citations and linked references to peer-reviewed source material. In the first two years of the project, PhD student Teaching Assistants (Jessica Williams and Priyanjali Chakraborty) assisted with the course, made edits in PressBooks, and helped coordinate the writing and revision process.

The textbook creation is a multi-year endeavor involving an anticipated three to four cohorts of first-semester PhD students. This video was made by four of the students in the first cohort for a presentation at the Annual Program Meeting of the Council for Social Work Education and presents their perspectives on the course and the OER creation:

After the first cohort of students completed their edits, a group of four OER fellows (Priyanjali Chakraborty, Lacey M. Jenkins, LaTisha A. Thomas, and Megan R. Westmore) made additional revisions, added self-regulated learning, problem-based learning, and case method exercises to the textbook. The second cohort of students completed their work on the project in December 2022 and the third cohort of students is currently making edits.

This project is still in progress. When a first draft is complete, a pre-release version of the book will be shared with faculty from other institutions for input into what revisions would be necessary for them to consider adoption in their programs. We will then make final revisions based on this external feedback and prepare the textbook for a rollout to the greater community of social work PhD programs.

About the Authors

This book was edited by Rebecca L. Mauldin and written by The Research Methods Consortium, a group of scholars associated with The University of Texas at Arlington’s School of Social Work. The majority of the members of the consortium were students in SOCW 6340 – Advanced Research Methods in Human Services. Other members include faculty and staff at The University of Texas at Arlington.

Individual authors may use the following citation for this book in their own materials:

Author & The Research Methods Consortium. (Year). Doctoral Research Methods in Social Work (R. L. Mauldin, Ed.). Mavs Open Press. https://uta.pressbooks.pub/advancedresearchmethodsinsw

Customization

If you would like to customize this resource to your campus, please download the Pressbooks XML file in the front matter and follow the instructions to create your own version tailored to your learning objectives. For more information on creating, adapting, and adopting open resources, consult this teaching note by Matthew DeCarlo.