Suchergebnisse

As the scientific marketplace rapidly evolves, we must keep revisiting strategic preparation of our doctoral students and early career scholars to be successful innovators in these contexts. As an inherently integrative, change-oriented, community-engaged, and context-sensitive discipline, social work has enormous potential as a value-added partner for greater cross-fertilization among scientists and stakeholders not only from the academy but also from clinical settings, laboratories, industry, and systems leadership. Yet social work researchers not uncommonly encounter perception challenges as they strive to bring their scientific potential and wares to the marketplace. This article argues that innovation and impact are now central expectations of research. Current research priorities increasingly require teams to function at a transdisciplinary level of theoretical and methodological integration and to develop translational partnerships. The article concludes with thoughts on educational directions to better prepare our T-shaped emerging scholars to be perceived and function as value-added research innovators.

The research reports by Boyd et al. and Herman et al. provide insights about intervention research with vulnerable populations that highlight often-neglected standards of evidence. This commentary describes linkages of nonspecific therapeutic factors critical to these outcome studies as illustrative of research to practice standards we must continually promote. Embedding intervention research with iterative links to service system and implementation research provides a framework for social work to chart future contributions toward closing critical translational gaps.

Contemporary research models are becoming increasingly transdisciplinary (TD), multilevel, community-connected, and bent on expediting the movement of research to impact. This requires not only fresh thinking about the science of social work but an educational architecture that fosters both cross-disciplinary understanding of complex underlying determinants and the ability to translate that knowledge into effective, sustainable action. This article illustrates the need for greater intentionality and coherence in preparing social work practitioners and researchers for participation in this changing landscape. We focus here on doctoral level training, but underscore opportunities for a robust educational "pipeline" linking undergraduate and graduate professional degree preparation to that at the doctoral and postdoctoral levels. We summarize selected literature that defines and operationalizes TD translational research, reflect strategically on social work's positioning within this scientific "marketplace," and offer recommendations for capacity building in social work doctoral education.

Longhofer and Floersch argue for more expansive thinking about the modes of social science research predominant in contemporary social work science. This commentary concurs with aspects of their article that we see as compatible both with social work aims and with current trends and imperatives in research and practice, including mixed methods and participatory studies, translational research, the scholarship of engagement, and rapidly emerging interest in collective impact. At the same time, it encourages the authors to extend their analyses by grounding them more thoroughly in the specifics of contemporary social work research, encouraging collective dialogue about the implications of their proposals, and recognizing that contemporary transdisciplinary and translational research endeavors are typically more fully aligned with these proposals than this article allows.

Shifts in the ways that science is being undertaken and marshaled toward social change argue for a new kind of professional competence. Taking the view that the science of social work is centrally about the relationship of research to social impact, the authors extend Fong's focus on transdisciplinary and translational approaches to science, illustrating ways that national and international priorities are exerting enormous influence in structures for and expectations of science relevant to social work. The authors also emphasize the growing centrality of transformational research, focusing in particular on the interdependence of education and impact. The intent is to stimulate reflectiveness regarding social work's preparedness to support and indeed amplify a robust culture of high impact science, including more confident, clearly articulated roles and skills in this contemporary scientific landscape.

Understanding predictors of military spouse psychosocial vulnerability informs efforts to assess, identify, and support at-risk spouses and families. In this analysis we test the effects of family stress and strain on military spouse psychological health, using a sample of female civilian spouses (n=161). Regression findings confirm expectations of the significant contribution of family stressors, strain, and resources in explaining variation in spouses' psychological health, controlling for deployment and socioeconomic factors. Identifying the effects of family stress on military spouse psychological health supports the need for family-centered interventions and prevention programs.