Thoughts on Social Work Knowledge Development Activities Within a Quantitative Framework (Editorial‪)‬

As a result of many years of serving as reviewers for numerous journals from multiple professions and disciplines and through our own experience as researchers and authors, we offer the following thoughts on conducting research within a quantitative framework. We hope these ideas can further strengthen knowledge development activities by social work researchers who rely on quantitative methods. The focus on quantitative methods is largely because this is the work we do, and hence we believe we are in a strong position to offer ideas that can serve to strengthen this line of work. Colleagues who can make suggestions along the lines of qualitative research will be sought out to speak on these issues in a subsequent editorial. In this editorial, we make a two-stage argument. First, we argue that quantitative research in social work must increase in its statistical sophistication if social work research is to make robust and widely read conclusions about the social problems and issues that social workers care about. Second, we argue that technical sophistication is not enough. Social workers and social work researchers must think carefully about the research questions, methodologies, and conclusions that underlie social work research.