Development of Innovative Group Work Practice Using the Intervention Research Paradigm‪.‬

When people feel beleaguered by life crises, social support groups can help them increase their resilience and resourcefulness. In developing support groups, social workers need to integrate knowledge from theory and research with practice wisdom to develop innovative and effective interventions that address the specific needs of particular populations. They also need to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of their interventions. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs using large sample sizes provide the most persuasive evidence of intervention effectiveness. Social work research has been criticized because researchers have not used these more rigorous designs. However, these designs are not used frequently because experimental research methodologies require a level of control over the conditions of research that makes them poorly adaptable to often uncontrollable practice settings. Recognizing this, Rothman and Thomas (1994) proposed an alternative--"developmental"--research methodology, namely the intervention research (IR) paradigm. Their nonexperimental approach is more flexible, capitalizes on the availability of small samples, and accommodates the dynamism of practice conditions. It also explicitly values practitioners' insights. In this article, the IR paradigm is illustrated in two case studies. These studies used a face-to-face support group for people with sickle cell disease (SCD) and an Internet-mediated, stress management support group for social workers. These studies are presented as a demonstration of the processes and applicability of IR methodologies in diverse contexts. We also summarize some of the useful insights that the use of this kind of methodology yields about newly developed interventions and about intervention research itself.