What Is Science?

Science is a way of systematically investigating our world to gain information and build knowledge. There is a method to the (occasional) madness of science, and that method grounds the process and guides our thinking as we use research and science to examine phenomenon.

You may be wondering why you need to learn about science and research if you’re pursuing a career in social science. The scientific method is just something biologists and chemists do, right? No! We all use science nearly every day in every discipline as well as in our personal lives; it’s important that people in all fields learn to understand science, even if they don’t do it themselves, to inform their practice and lives.

Consuming research and living with its results

Think about your experiences and the things you encounter in your daily life. Some of these things may be puzzling, challenging, or frustrating. Maybe you encounter roadblocks on your path to doing something, or you see a process that’s wildly inefficient. Many times, we want to point out to others the challenges we see. However, think about how you share your frustrations: when you express your thoughts on these experiences, are you just complaining, or can you share some data to back up what you’re saying? If you have a concern you want to bring up to someone who might be able to change things (a supervisor or boss, a lawmaker, a philanthropist interesting in donating money to a cause), would you rather just tell them something’s wrong, or be able to offer evidence?

Understanding research methods and how they work can help position you to actually do more than just complain. Further, whether you know it or not, research probably has some impact on your life each and every day. Many of our laws, social policies, and court proceedings are grounded in some degree of empirical research and evidence (Jenkins & Kroll-Smith, 1996). ^[1] That’s not to say that all laws and social policies are good or make sense. However, you can’t have an informed opinion about any of them without understanding where they come from, how they were formed, and what their evidence base is. Consumers, service providers, and – more broadly – all the people who live under laws, policies, and expectations need to understand the root causes and policy solutions to social problems that their clients are experiencing.

A lawsuit against Walmart provides an example of social science research in action. A sociologist named Professor William Bielby was enlisted by plaintiffs in the suit to conduct an analysis of Walmart’s personnel policies in order to support their claim that Walmart engages in gender discriminatory practices. Bielby’s analysis shows that Walmart’s compensation and promotion decisions may indeed have been vulnerable to gender bias. In June 2011, the United States Supreme Court decided against allowing the case to proceed as a class-action lawsuit (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 2011). While a class-action suit was not pursued in this case, consider the impact that such a suit against one of our nation’s largest employers could have on companies and their employees around the country and perhaps even on your individual experience as a consumer (Hart & Secunda, 2009).

In addition to having to live with laws and policies that have been crafted based on social science research, you are also a consumer of all kinds of research. A strong understanding of research methods can help you be a more informed consumer. Have you ever noticed the magazine headlines that peer out at you while you are waiting in line to pay for your groceries? Or, if you’re more technologically-oriented, maybe you can think of an influencer you’ve seen on TikTok who is trying to get you to buy their course or supplement. These headlines, videos, and shorts are geared toward piquing your interest and making you believe that you will learn a great deal or improve your life if you only follow their advice. However, since you would have no way of knowing whether these sources have gathered data from a representative sample or measured meaningful outcomes, you have no reason to believe that the advice would be worthwhile. By having some understanding of research methods, you can avoid wasting your money and time on inappropriate advice.

If you tune into a news broadcast, open up social media, or receive messages from friends and family, you’re likely to hear about some new and exciting research result – A NEW STUDY FINDS…something. A strong understanding of research methods will help you to read past vague headlines and ask clarifying questions about what you see and hear. In other words, research methods can help you to become a more responsible consumer of public and popular information. Who wouldn’t want to be more responsibly informed?

Evidence-based practice

At some point in your schooling, you’ve probably asked yourself “when will I ever use this?” You may not believe us yet, but the research methods from this text will be used often in almost any career (as well as in your day-to-day life, as described above). If you work for a social services agency or in a therapeutic setting, your supervisors and administrators may have to demonstrate that their agency’s programs are effective at achieving their goals. Most private and public grants will require evidence of effectiveness for your agency to receive funding and to keep the programs running. If you work for a community-based organization, you’ll likely use research methods to target interventions to the needs of your service area. If you practice as a clinician or educator, you’ll want to make sure that the interventions you use in practice are effective and not harmful to your clients.  In addition, you may want to track client progress on goals, help clients gather data about their clinical issues, or use data to advocate for change. As a whole, all human service providers must remain current on the scientific literature to ensure competent and ethical practice.

You might have heard of the term “evidence-based.” This shows up in many occupations beyond human services (think about going in for a medical procedure – you’d want your doctor to be using evidence-based treatments on you, right?). To be evidence-based in our work, we must be able to understand and evaluate scientific information. Evidence-based practice (EBP) for social workers, for example, involves making decisions on how to help clients based on the best available evidence. A social worker must examine the current literature and understand both the theory and evidence relevant to the practice situation. According to Rubin and Babbie (2017), EBP also involves understanding client characteristics, using practice wisdom and existing resources, and adapting to environmental context. It is not simply “doing what the literature says,” but rather a process by which practitioners examine the literature, client, self, and context to inform interventions with clients and systems. Any practitioner working with people, not just licensed social workers, should strive to apply critical thinking to help them understand both the research evidence and the context in front of them to provide the best care or service they can.

Let’s look at an example: you’re an administrator at a children’s health agency. The agency uses a private grant to fund a program that provides low-income children with bicycles, teaches the children how to repair and care for their bicycles, and leads group bicycle outings after school. Physical activity has been shown to improve mental health outcomes in scientific studies, but is program improving mental health in your clients? Ethically, you need to make sure that the program is achieving its goals. If the program is not beneficial, the resources should be spent on more effective programs. Practically, you will also need to demonstrate to the agency’s donors that bicycling truly helps children deal with their mental health concerns.

The example above demonstrates the need for evaluation research, or research that evaluates the outcomes of a policy or program. There are a number of different ways you may go about examining the questions above, and you’ll learn about many of them in this book. Evaluation research is embedded into the funding of nonprofit, human service agencies.  Government and private grants need to make sure their money is being spent wisely. If your program does not work, then the funds will be allocated to a program that has been proven effective or a new program that may be effective. Just because a program has the right goal doesn’t mean it will actually accomplish that goal. Grant reporting is an important part of agency-based practice. Agencies, in a very important sense, help us discover what approaches actually help clients.

In addition to engaging in evaluation research to satisfy the requirements of a grant, your future agencies or employers may also engage in evaluation research to validate a new approach to treatment. Innovation in human service work is vital. Sam Tsemberis relates an “aha” moment from his practice in this Ted talk on homelessness (TEDx Talks, 2012). As a faculty member at the New York University School of Medicine, he noticed a problem with people cycling in and out of the local psychiatric hospital wards. Clients would arrive in psychiatric crisis, become stable with the help of medical supervision, and end up back in the psychiatric crisis ward shortly after discharge.  When he asked the clients what their issues were, they said they were unable to participate in homelessness programs because they were not always compliant with medication for their mental health diagnosis and they continued to use drugs and alcohol. Collaboratively, the problem facing these clients was defined as a homelessness service system that was unable to meet clients where they were. Clients who were unwilling to remain completely abstinent from drugs and alcohol or who did not want to take psychiatric medications were simply cycling in and out of psychiatric crisis, moving from the hospital to the street and back to the hospital.

The solution that Sam Tsemberis implemented and popularized was called Housing First. It is an approach to homelessness prevention that starts by, you guessed it, providing people with housing first.  Like Tanya Tull’s approach to address child and family homelessness, Tsemberis created a model to address chronic homelessness in people with co-occurring disorders (substance abuse and mental illness). The Housing First model holds that housing is a human right, one that should not be denied based on substance use or mental health diagnosis. Clients are given housing as soon as possible. The Housing First agency provides wraparound treatment from an interdisciplinary team, including social workers, nurses, psychiatrists, and former clients who are in recovery. Over the past few decades, this program has gone from one program in New York City to the program of choice for federal, state, and local governments seeking to address homelessness in their communities.

The main idea behind Housing First is that once clients have an apartment of their own, they are better able to engage in mental health and substance abuse treatment. While this approach may seem logical to you, it is backwards from the traditional homelessness treatment model. The traditional approach began with the client stopping drug and alcohol use and taking prescribed medication. Only after clients achieved these goals were they offered group housing. If the client remained sober and medication compliant, they could then graduate towards less restrictive individual housing.

Evaluation research helps practitioners establish that their innovation is better than the alternatives and should be implemented more broadly. By comparing clients who were served through Housing First and traditional treatment, Tsemberis could establish that Housing First was more effective at keeping people housed and progressing on mental health and substance abuse goals. Starting first with smaller studies and graduating to much larger ones, Housing First built a reputation as an effective approach to addressing homelessness. When President Bush created the Collaborative Initiative to Help End Chronic Homelessness in 2003, Housing First was used in many of the interventions and its effectiveness was demonstrated on a national scale. Since then, a number of studies with different methodologies have examined this treatment and found evidence of usefulness (National Alliance to End Homelessness, 2021).

Finding Evidence-Based PracticesYou may be curious about other evidence-based practices. You can browse the NREPP, Cochrane Library, Campbell Collaboration, and other clearinghouses that maintain databases of the most well-studied interventions and programs we know about. Individual academic journals also provide evidence of interventions and treatments (like a special issue of the Journal of Family and Marital Therapy published in 2022; Wittenborn & Haltrop, 2022), as well as some grey literature (something we’ll discuss in a future chapter).

In addition to using evidence-based practices, however, we also want to encourage you to think about what evidence you yourself might contribute one day – what is your bright idea and how can it change the world? Practitioners, educators, and regular people innovate all the time, often incorporating those innovations into other group’s approach and mission. Through the use of research methods, these groups can then demonstrate to others in the field, to granting agencies, and to policymakers that their innovations should be more widely used. Without this wellspring of new ideas, we’d never be able to adapt our treatments, programs, and education to the changing world.

While you may not become a scientist in the sense of wearing a lab coat and using a microscope, as a family or social scientist, you must understand the science part of our field in order to engage in ethical practice. Knowing the thought process behind research decisions and the basics of how to evaluate and apply research findings will benefit you in all areas of your life.

But research is…

Hopefully you’re convinced that science shows up in the social fields you likely care about, like Family Science and Social work. However, you might also have some concerns. Research might feel scary, hard, or boring based on how you’ve encountered it before. Let’s explore a little more of each of these concerns to see if we can help you feel more at ease and ready to move forward in this book.

Get out of your own way

Together, the beliefs of “research is useless, boring, and hard” can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you believe that research is boring, then you won’t find it interesting. If you believe that research is hard, then you will struggle more with assignments. If you believe that research is useless, then you won’t see its utility. You are not required to love research (and most of you probably still won’t want to engage with it more than absolutely necessary once you’re done with this class), to help you get through this course and to maybe help yourself find meaning in what you’re doing, we suggest reframing how you think about research using these touchstones:

• All human service providers rely on social science research to engage in competent practice.
• No one already knows research. It’s something you’ll learn through practice, and it’s challenging for everyone.
• Research is relevant because it allows you to figure out what is known about any topic you want to study.
• If the topic you choose to study is important to you, you will be more interested in research.