Summary
Contents
It will aim to be one of possibly the central contemporary international text in this field for social work researchers, bringing together in one volume the developments and debates that have been seen in recent years in peer reviewed journals, including the Sage journal Qualitative Social Work (founded and co-edited by one of us).
Researching and Evaluating Interventions and Outcomes
Researching and Evaluating Interventions and Outcomes
We open the chapter with some considerations about central ideas about evaluation, outcomes, cause and what we have in mind in the evaluation context by ‘qualitative’. We emphasise that evaluation should be distinguished from research in terms of purposes rather than methods.
The later parts of the chapter are more straightforward in structure and focus. We consider two general linked questions. First, are there particular inquiry designs that lend themselves especially to qualitative evaluation? Second, what methods of disciplined inquiry show special promise for qualitative evaluators and intervention researchers?
We assess the merits of simulations, longitudinal designs, indirect observation, change–process research, hermeneutic single case designs, and epiphanies.
We close the chapter with an ...
