A few thoughts on evidence in social work.

Social work practitioners must act every working day in the face of uncertainty. This uncertainty arises in part because knowledge is often difficult to locate or sometimes lacking regarding: the systems context the population being served; the particular client system; the set of problems the client system is experiencing; as well as the various interventions that could be selected. It seems reasonable to explore ways to reduce the experience of uncertainty, and narrow, if not eliminate, the knowledge gaps that arise in such situations. The generic idea of evidence-based practice has been advanced for some time as an approach to support practitioners in their day-to-day work. This article has two foci. First, it will briefly and selectively review attempts to make social work practice more evidence based. Second, it will describe one stage in the evolution of a Web-based service (information for practice [IP]). IP is a long-term project with the mission of keeping practitioners informed about news and new scholarship in the field, so that they can more easily make their practice more evidenced based.

Tracing thought through time and space: a selective review of bibliometrics in social work.

Bibliometrics is a field of research that examines bodies of knowledge within and across disciplines. Citation analysis, a component of bibliometrics, focuses on the quantitative assessment of citation patterns within a body of literature. Citation analysis has been used in social work to examine the quantity and the impact of the work of individuals and academic institutions. This paper presents a selective review of these uses of bibliometrics within social work.

What happens to our ideas? A bibliometric analysis of articles in social work in health care in the 1990s.

Scholars spend a considerable amount of time reflecting upon their professional work. When individuals decide to communicate their professional thoughts beyond informal venues, the penultimate expression of their reflection is the peer reviewed journal article. The study reported here entailed a bibliometric analysis of articles appearing in the journal Social Work in Health Care during the 1990s, in order to better understand what happens to our ideas after they appear in a peer reviewed journal article.

Bibliometrics: a potential decision making aid in hiring, reappointment, tenure and promotion decisions.

The assessment of scholarship assumes a central role in the evaluation of individual faculty, educational programs and academic fields. Because the production and assessment of scholarship is so central to the faculty role, it is incumbent upon decision makers to strive to make assessments of scholarship fair and equitable. This paper will focus on an approach to the assessment of the quantity and impact of the most important subset of an individual's scholarship-peer-reviewed journal articles. The primary goal of this paper is to stimulate discussion regarding scholarship assessment in hiring, reappointment, tenure and promotion decisions.

Shallow science or meta-cognitive insights: a few thoughts on reflection via bibliometrics.

The authors conclude this special issue by responding to the commentaries of their colleagues and reviewing relevant scholarship that appeared in the bibliometric literature since their literature reviews for the initial three articles in this issue were completed. They conclude, in part, that examination of bibliometric data regarding the entry of an article into the profession's knowledge base, and its ongoing life therein, may provide insights about the scientific communication process that lead to improvements of that process.

The deep web, dark matter, metabundles and the broadband elites: do you need an informaticist?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is growing in size and is becoming a substantial component of life. This seems especially true for US professionals, including social workers. It will require effort by these professionals to use the WWW effectively and efficiently. One of the main issues that these professionals will encounter in these efforts is the quality of materials located on the WWW. This paper reviews some of the factors related to improving the quality of information obtained from the WWW by social workers.

The coming of age for assisted living care: new options for senior housing and social work practice.

As the United States experiences substantial growth in its population that is 65 years and older, development of safe housing and compassionate care for seniors is becoming a priority domestic issue. Assisted living is one of the fastest growing types of senior housing in the nation, attracting residents with a perceived combination of security, personal care services, less restrictive homelike environments and emphasis on independence, privacy and personal dignity. As there is limited reference to assisted living in the social work literature, this article selectively reviews the broader literature on the aging U.S. population and their need, assisted living as a senior housing and care option, the characteristics of this approach and the potential for social work practice in this evolving arena.

The impact of a computer network on pediatric pain and anxiety: a randomized controlled clinical trial.

This was the third randomized controlled clinical trial (RCCT) of Starbright World (SBW)--a private, interactive computer network for hospitalized children. The present randomized controlled clinical trial (RCCT) consisted of a series of 39 replicated single system designs (SSDs) that compared children's self-reports of pain intensity, pain aversiveness and anxiety in the SBW condition with those in a stan- dard clinical practice condition. Findings from the SSDs were aggregated using meta-analysis. Although children experienced slightly less pain intensity, pain aversiveness, and anxiety in the SBW condition, these results did not achieve statistical significance. The relationship of these findings to the two prior studies of the effectiveness of SBW is discussed.