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Evaluation Practice bridges the apparent gap between practice and research to present a logical, systematic model to guide all professional thinking and action within the context of everyday professional life. Their framework embraces diverse theories, action, and sets of evidence from a range of professional and disciplinary perspectives

Over the past several decades, disability and social work have become increasingly strange bedfellows, in large part due to the espousal of the medical model of disability on the part of social workers. This approach locates disability with the body as a deficit in need of repair, revision, or ongoing professional scrutiny. In opposition to this approach, disability scholars proposed the social model, which holds negative stereotyping and oppression as disabling factors, thereby creating a binary debate on cause and appropriate response to disability. We suggest that this binary is not useful in guiding social work to consider disability as a complex phenomenon, which requires multifaceted action responses. We therefore propose disability as disjuncture. This interactive model synthesizes a wealth of interdisciplinary fields to inform social work analysis and response to disability that meets the goals of advancing individual function, locating disability within a broad diversity dialog, and thus promoting equivalence of rights, choice, and opportunity for full participation for those who fit within the disability category. We conclude with exemplars of the thinking and action processes, guided by disjuncture theory, that illustrate the potency of this framework and its guiding properties for progressive social work disability practice.

Social Work Research and Evaluation applies systematically developed research knowledge to social work practice and emphasizes the "doing" of social work as a reciprocal avenue for generating research evidence and social work knowledge. Using the Examined Practice Model, authors Elizabeth G. DePoy and Stephen F. Gilson present research as the identification of a problem and then proceed to evaluate the efficacy of social work practice in its resolution. Diverse theories, actions, and sets of evidence from a range of professional and disciplinary perspectives are included to underscore the importance of integrating evaluation and practice in research.

The study presented here, which relied on naturalistic design and focus-group methodology, examined the experiences of abused women with disabilities and the women's use of and need for services and resources. The study found that although disabled and nondisabled women face many of the same forms of abuse, disabled women have unique experiences that require specialized services.

Social work literature, research, and practice on disabilities has lagged behind other topical areas dealing with oppressed groups. The social work literature remains "expert focused" and generally fragmented into discussions of specific disabilities or subpopulations. A viable general model that deals with the personal experience of disability is not available. This exploratory study presents a social work literature search and analysis as well as interviews with six individuals with disabilities about their experiences with social workers. Individuals with disabilities assert that they were treated as though they had categorically fewer aspirations, abilities, and perhaps even fundamental rights than did nondisabled people. This study provides a base for follow-up research on models of consumer-focused social work practice in the area of disability.