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A step by step guide for social work students, Policy Analysis for Social Workers, is a comprehensive guide to help students understand the process of policy development and analysis so they can become effective advocates. This book begins by laying the foundation of the purpose of policy and how it it relates to social work values. It also discusses the field of policy studies and helps students understand the various kinds of analysis. The next section highlights criteria on evaluating public policy by helping students understand how to define policy limits and uses and how they will most likely be used. It clearly lays out various criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, equity, political feasibility, social acceptability, administrative and technical feasibility) to help students evaluate policy. In addition, ...

U. S. Social Welfare Reform examines pivotal changes in social welfare for low-income families in the United States between 1981, the advent of the Reagan administration, and 2008, the end of the G.W. Bush administration. It focuses on the change from the Federal-state open entitlement Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program to the time-limited state run Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program which Congress authorized with passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996. The book also focuses on the development of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, enacted in 1975 against the backdrop of failed efforts to nationalize AFDC which aimed at providing a basic income to all poor families, but which blossomed with continued bipartisan support in the 1990s. This book also explores alternative strategies to assist low-income families, including job training programs. It present original research on the educational and economic well-being of youth from low-income families who participated in government sponsored job training programs in the late 1970 and early 1980s. The book seeks a middle ground between general and technical social policy texts. It provides more depth than is available in the more general social policy texts. Further, while the more comprehensive texts often rely on government documents and reports relying on Current Population Survey data to profile program use, this book relies on panel data from the National Longitudinal Surveys and presents original research that builds upon prior related research and scholarship about the role of the federal government in social welfare provisioning in general and AFDC/TANF and EITC use in particular and on school-to-work transition programs. It presents related technical material in a narrative style better suited to professionals and policy makers who may lack expertise in quantitative analysis.

In this essay, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the alternative peer-review processes and the rationale and evidence used by Dunleavy (2021). To move the discussion forward, I end this response with a call to devise a study that would test some of the empirical claims associated with the modified traditional peer-review process I originally proposed (Caputo, 2019) and the one advanced by Dunleavy (2021).

The author argues for the centrality of peer review in assessing the scholarly merits of manuscripts, given considerable changes in the publication landscape that present formidable challenges for editors to solicit qualified reviewers, and seeks to convince reluctant senior faculty and scholarly practitioners to review manuscripts in their areas of expertise, contending in effect that we have a professional obligation to do so.

Feminist standpoint epistemology is neither a necessary nor a sufficient starting point for social work intervention research. Contemporary social scientists readily grapple with cultural, political, and/or structural aspects of social problems either in the absence of or in conjunction with an explicitly formulated feminist standpoint epistemology. The article also argues against privileging any group's voice for purposes of social work intervention research, including the voices of marginalized and oppressed groups whose judgments, perceptions, and statement of facts are as prone to error or likely to be as mistaken as anyone else's.

"The role of research in the Family Service Agency" is a topic that encompasses a variety of seemingly paradoxical, if not contraindicative, issues: social science research versus social work research, the researcher versus the practitioner, practice versus policy, academic research versus agency-based research, the generation of knowledge versus the application of research findings, and empirical research versus theoretical research. The issues exist in part because of the historical influences that shaped the development of the social sciences and the profession of social work and in part because of the differences in the size, structure, function, and resources of an agency. They are also due to differences in the nature, purpose, methodology, and design of research as well as to differences in the affinity of administrators and practitioners for the findings of research activities. (Caputo, 1985, p. 205)

Relying on data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort, this article examines the pervasiveness and depth of credit card and mortgage debt in 2004 and 2008 (N = 3,966). Findings indicate that (a) significant majorities experienced either credit card debt, mortgage debt, or both; (b) debtors increased as a proportion of the population between 2004 and 2008; (c) mortgage-related debt, but not credit card debt, was disproportionately distributed along sociodemographic characteristics (married, more affluent, and more educated) and by attitudinal dispositions (locus of control and self-esteem); and (d) separated/widowed/divorced persons and never married persons were more economically vulnerable, having higher mortgage debt-to-income ratios of more than 1.5 to 2 times their income.

This study expands our understanding of participation in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program among prime working-age individuals from EITC-eligible families between 1999 and 2005. It identifies gaps in program use over time such that outreach efforts might better target low-income working families to increase EITC take-up rates. Relying on National Longitudinal Survey data, findings indicate that more than one third (37.8%) of the population sample was EITC-eligible at least 1 year (3,034 of 8,033 individuals). Less than 20% of EITC-eligible families filed for the credit, and about half of these filed more than 1 year. Robust correlates of EITC use included lower income; larger families; separated, divorced, or widowed persons; and women versus their respective counterparts. Strategies to increase the EITC take-up rates are discussed.