Evidence-Based Social Work Practice
Test Preparation
Course Introduction
Evidence-Based Social Work Practice introduces students to the principles and methods of integrating the best available research evidence with clinical expertise and client values in social work decision-making. The course explores systematic approaches to identifying, appraising, and applying empirical research to inform assessment, intervention, and evaluation within diverse practice settings. Students learn skills in formulating answerable practice questions, searching for relevant studies, critically evaluating the quality of evidence, and adapting findings to meet the unique needs of various client populations. Emphasis is placed on ethical considerations, cultural competence, and fostering an ongoing commitment to professional development through evidence-based approaches.
Recommended Textbook
Empowerment Series Research Methods for Social Work 9th Edition by Allen Rubin
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654 Verified Questions
654 Flashcards
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Chapter 1: Why Study Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) Our attempts to learn about the world we live in come from
A) direct experience.
B) tradition.
C) direct, personal inquiry.
D) authority.
E) all of the above.
Answer: E
Q2) Refusing to examine research on the services we deliver has no bearing on how professionally ethical we are.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q3) Which of the following is are a warning sign of the possibility of pseudoscience?
A) Caution is employed in making claims.
B) Overgeneralization is avoided.
C) Claims are based on testimonials.
D) All of the above.
E) None of the above.
Answer: C
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Chapter 2: Evidence-Based Practice
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Sample Questions
Q1) The evidence-based practice model encourages practitioners to integrate scientific evidence with their practice expertise.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
Q2) Which of the following statements is/are true about critically appraising the quality of evidence found in the evidence-based practice search process?
A) All evidence produced by randomized clinical trials should be deemed strong evidence
B) Randomized clinical trials always reside at the top of any research hierarchy.
C) Only evidence produced by randomized clinical trials should be considered as worthy of guiding practice decisions, regardless of the nature of the decision.
D) All of the above are true.
E) None of the above is true.
Answer: E
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Chapter 3: Factors Influencing the Research Process
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Sample Questions
Q1) In deduction we start from observed data and develop a generalization that explains the relationship between the observed concepts.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) Marxism is an example of:
A) an ideology.
B) a paradigm.
C) a theory.
D) interpretivism.
Answer: A
Q3) Which of the following is an attribute? :
A) Religion.
B) Female.
C) Occupation.
D) Socioeconomic status.
Answer: B
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Page 5
Chapter 4: Comparing Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed
Methods of Inquiry
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Sample Questions
Q1) Interpretivist paradigms are more likely to be used in qualitative studies than in quantitative studies.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Identify the reasons for using mixed methods.
Q3) Compared to quantitative studies, qualitative studies are more likely to:
A) be inductive.
B) have a larger sample size.
C) use less time consuming data collection methods.
D) Ask close-ended questions.
E) All of the above.
Q4) Which of the following is/are an example of a qualitative research question?
A) How does feel to be homeless?
B) How many clients receiving our agency services are homeless?
C) How effective is our agency in reducing homelessness?
D) All of the above.
Q5) Identify and briefly describe three advanced mixed-methods designs.
Q6) Describe the contrasting emphases of quantitative and qualitative studies.
Q7) Explain how one would decide whether to emphasize qualitative or quantitative research methods - or both - in a particular study. Page 6
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Chapter 5: The Ethics and Politics of Social Work Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) Certificates of confidentiality are used because police or other authorities might force disclosure of participants' identities in research data.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following questions should be answered in an informed consent form?
A) What will you be asked to do if you participate in this research study?
B) What are the possible discomforts and risks involved in the study?
C) What are the possible benefits of the study?
D) All of the above.
Q3) Identify five commonly recommended guidelines for attempting to avoid bias and insensitivity regarding gender or culture in a study.
Q4) Explain why bias and insensitivity regarding gender and culture in a study's methodology can be relevant to the ethics of the study.
Q5) Although social work researchers rarely plan studies that could harm participants, the issue of harm to participants is still a real possibility.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 6: Culturally Competent Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is/are true about whether research is culturally competent?
A) It does NOT influence how statistical findings are interpreted
B) If Not culturally competent, it risks having a harmful effect on the minority community.
C) It is NOT related to whether childcare is provided to research participants.
D) It has NO bearing on the selection of sampling procedures.
Q2) When recruiting minority and oppressed populations in research studies, you should A) use exactly the same informed consent procedures as with the majority population. B) use the same types of advertisements or referral sources as with the majority population.
C) obtain endorsement for your study from community leaders.
D) avoid the use of community members as research staff.
Q3) Ethnocentrism is the belief in the superiority of your own culture. A)True
B)False
Q4) Explain the difference between linguistic, conceptual and metric equivalence.
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Chapter 7: Problem Formulation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Agency member resistances to research often result in the need for much more time than anticipated to complete the research.
A)True
B)False
Q2) If researchers wanted to find the average age of all licensed social workers in a country, they would undertake:
A) a descriptive study.
B) a trend study
C) a cohort study.
D) an exploratory study.
E) an explanatory study.
Q3) Cohort studies examine how specific subpopulations change over time, but the specific set of people observed will be different at different chronological points.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Give an example of how the longitudinal study of a problem in social welfare would differ depending on whether it was a trend study, a cohort study, or a panel study.
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Page 10
Chapter 8: Conceptualization in Quantitative and Qualitative Inquiry
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is true about choosing an existing scale as an operational definition of self-esteem for children to complete before and after an intervention?
A) The longer the scale, the better.
B) A scale that has been shown to be reliable and valid for adults would be a good choice.
C) The scale should be sensitive to change over time.
D) The scale exemplifies a direct observable.
Q2) Which of the following statements is true about the qualitative perspective on operational definitions? and after an intervention?
A) We must know the most salient variables before we implement the study.
B) We must understand the variables well enough in advance to anticipate the best way to operationally define them. r an intervention?
C) Specifying variables only in terms of observable indicators is superficial.
D) Social context should be ignored, as it applies more to the quantitative perspective.
Q3) Illustrate how a child's level of behavioral problems could be operationally defined in three different ways using three different sources of data.
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Chapter 9: Measurement
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Sample Questions
Q1) Professor Myth asked respondents whether or not they had ever been divorced. One year later Professor Myth asked respondents the same question. Myth found that with repeated applications of the measure different responses were obtained for the same subject. This means that the measuring instrument was A) unreliable.
B) invalid.
C) unreliable or the value on the variable had changed. D) lacking in face validity.
Q2) Reliability and validity are handled precisely in the same ways in qualitative inquiry as they are in quantitative inquiry.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The tendency to give a favorable impression of oneself is an example of random error.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Given a scale to measure family risk of child abuse or neglect, contrast a way to measure the criterion-related validity of the scale with a way to measure that scale's construct validity.
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Chapter 10: Constructing Measurement Instruments
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Sample Questions
Q1) The result of combining several indicators of a variable is a composite measurement of the variable.
A)True
B)False
Q2) The questionnaire item "Did you file federal and state income tax reports last year?" with a response set of yes, no, can't remember, other, is an example of
A) an open-ended question.
B) an ordinal variable.
C) a double-barreled question.
D) a negative item.
Q3) The questionnaire item "Which is not a serious problem in the U.S. today, anomie or the socialization of the young?" violates which of the following guidelines?
A) Avoid double-barreled questions.
B) Avoid short items.
C) Avoid leading the respondent.
D) Avoid meaningful questions.
E) Avoid negative items.
Q4) Identify acceptable options for handling missing data in an index or scale.
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Chapter 11: Causal Inference and Experimental Designs
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Sample Questions
Q1) A school social worker administered a self-esteem test to a group of 9th graders in September. During the school year the students received intensive social work intervention designed to improve their self-esteem. In May the self-esteem test was given again and the self-esteem scores improved. Which of the following statements is true about this study?
A) It s results show that the intervention was effective in improving self esteem.
B) It only controls for testing effects and statistical regression.
C) It only controls for history and maturation.
D) It does not permit any conclusive causal inferences to be made.
Q2) The problem of external validity refers to the generalizability of results.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Whenever two variables are correlated, we may assume that one is the cause of the other.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Explain what is meant by internal and external validity.
Q5) Briefly describe how a study would be particularly vulnerable to the threat of statistical regression.
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Chapter 12: Quasi-Experimental Designs
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Sample Questions
Q1) Videotaping treatment sessions should be used only as a last resort when assessing intervention fidelity.
A)True B)False
Q2) Qualitative methods offer a number of techniques that on-site research staff members can use in attempting to observe research implementation pitfalls.
A)True B)False
Q3) Case-control designs have a high degree of internal validity because they eliminate the problem of recall bias.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Explain why the validity of quasi-experimental designs is strengthened by using multiple pretests, switching replications, and selecting a comparison group as similar as possible to the experimental group:
Q5) Discuss how qualitative methods can be used to try to avoid or alleviate the pitfalls identified above in essay number 2.
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Chapter 13: Single-Case Evaluation Designs
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Sample Questions
Q1) Discuss why it can be argued that a single-case AB design, if done appropriately, has greater internal validity than a simple pretest/posttest group design with no control group.
Q2) The ability to construct a retrospective baseline is one of the advantages of using available records.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A social work student seeks to reduce her own general level of anxiety through self-desensitization. She used the last five weeks of the fall semester for her baseline and the first five weeks of the spring semester for her intervention period. Why is this a problem? What alternative do you propose?
Q4) Which of the following approaches would be least obtrusive in regard to measuring the impact of the above group work intervention on school performance?
A) Obtain grade, attendance, and conduct data from school records.
B) Observe the student's in-class behavior yourself.
C) With the client's permission, obtain videotapes of the child's in-class behavior.
D) Interview the child.
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Chapter 14: Program Evaluation
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is NOT true about the utilization of program evaluation findings?
A) They are less likely to be used if they contradict deeply held beliefs.
B) If the results are clear and have obvious policy implications, they will always be used.
C) They are less likely to be used when they threaten vested interests.
D) How they are written up rarely has any bearing on their potential utilization.
Q2) External evaluators may not be objective and independent of stakeholder influences in the way they design, carry out, and report their evaluations.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Agency administrators and practitioners are likely to encourage maximum scientific rigor in evaluations of program outcome, irrespective of the funding implications.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Describe the impact managed care has had on program evaluation.
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Chapter 15: Sampling
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Sample Questions
Q1) The general guideline for the cluster design is to minimize the number of clusters selected while increasing the number of elements within each cluster.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Generalizing about victims of spouse abuse based on a sample of battered wives is an example of gender bias in sampling..
A)True
B)False
Q3) You are doing research on hospital personnel-orderlies, technicians, nurses, and doctors. You want to be sure you draw a sample that has cases in each of the personnel categories. You want to use probability sampling. An appropriate strategy would be
A) simple random sampling.
B) quota sampling.
C) cluster sampling.
D) stratified sampling.
E) accidental sampling.
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Chapter 16: Survey Research
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Sample Questions
Q1) In general, survey research is an appropriate observational method for A) describing a population too large to observe directly.
B) descriptive purposes, only.
C) explanatory purposes, only
D) exploratory purposes, only.
Q2) The interviewer should be a neutral medium through which questions and answers are transmitted.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of online surveys.
Q4) In contrast to interviews, self-administered questionnaires have the advantage of A) being more effective in dealing with complicated issues.
B) producing fewer incomplete questions.
C) dealing with the context of social life.
D) handling sensitive issues more effectively.
Q5) Identify three do's and three don'ts among the tips for conducting online surveys.
Q6) Discuss the advantages of combining qualitative research methods with survey research methods.
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Chapter 17: Analyzing Existing Data: Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
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Sample Questions
Q1) Standard probability sampling techniques should NOT be used in content analysis. A)True
B)False
Q2) In comparison to coding the manifest content of communication, coding the latent content
A) has a disadvantage in terms of validity.
B) has an advantage in terms of reliability.
C) is better designed for tapping the underlying meaning of communications.
D) has an advantage in terms of specificity.
Q3) Unobtrusive measures can reduce the problem of
A) the researcher's impact on the phenomenon being studied.
B) invalid operationalization of concepts.
C) unreliable measurements.
D) invalid measurement.
E) none of the above.
Q4) Historical and comparative data analysis often is influenced by a particular theoretical paradigm.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 18: Qualitative Research: General Principles
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Sample Questions
Q1) Professor Hall was planning to do a field study of unemployed recent immigrants. Hall wanted to be sure that persons representing all different age, racial, and sex categories were included in the sample of unemployed recent immigrants. What kind of sampling scheme would you recommend?
A) Deviant cases
B) Quota sampling
C) Stratified sampling
D) Snowball sampling
E) Cluster sampling
Q2) When qualitative studies involve observing people in their natural environment, ethical issues are less likely to be a concern than in other types of research.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Prolonged engagement is discouraged in qualitative research be4cause it increases the risk of reactivity and respondent bias.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 19: Qualitative Research: Specific Methods
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Sample Questions
Q1) An example of the participant-as-observer includes
A) joining a sorority or fraternity to study initiation rituals without revealing your identity as a researcher.
B) telling people you're a spy to find out how they react.
C) telling a motorcycle gang that you are a researcher and would like to ride with them for a year to understand their interaction patterns.
D) being a newspaper reporter who interviews union workers to learn about recent strike efforts.
Q2) A risk with the complete participant role risks is that the researchers might have an effect on what they are observing.
A)True
B)False
Q3) It is possible to assume both the emic and etic perspectives in the same research study
A)True
B)False
Q4) Group conformity or groupthink is a potential disadvantage of focus groups.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 20: Qualitative Data Analysis
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Sample Questions
Q1) The utility of case-oriented analysis is the fact that one case canmake theory.
A)True
B)False
Q2) It is as important to identify the standardized unit for coding in qualitative analysis as it is in quantitative analysis.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Professor Wang is interested in looking at the grandparent - grandchild relationship. Wang wonders whether grandparents assume different roles when providing care to grandchildren. That is, are some grandparents very distant from the grandchildren while others become surrogate parents? According to the Lofland's scheme, Wang is focusing on
A) frequencies.
B) causes.
C) processes.
D) structures.
E) magnitudes.
Q4) Identify at last one way that computer programs analyze qualitative data.
Q5) Describe how coding, memoing, and concept mapping are used in qualitative analysis.
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Chapter 21: Descriptive Data Analysis
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Sample Questions
Q1) Given the following age distribution, the mean is 16, 31, 5, 30, 4, 3, 2
A) 2
B) 5
C) 13
D) 30
Q2) The range is smaller than the interquartile range.
A)True
B)False
Q3) A research article reports that the number of group treatment sessions attended by a sample was normally distributed, with a mean of 20 and a standard deviation of 6. Which of the following statements is/are true about the sample?
A) Over 75% attended at least 20 sessions.
B) Over one-third attended more than 26 sessions.
C) Slightly more than 15 % attended less than 14 sessions.
D) Slightly more than 15 % attended less than 8 sessions.
Q4) Grouped data are created through the combination of attributes of a variable.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What is the purpose of data cleaning? How is it done?
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Chapter 22: Inferential Data Analysis
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Sample Questions
Q1) Explain what is meant by "chance as a rival hypothesis.
Q2) Which of the following hypotheses assumes that there is no relationship between two variables?
A) Research
B) Null
C) Alternate
D) Secondary
E) Substantive
Q3) Explain the difference between statistical significance, relationship strength, and substantive significance.
Q4) An experiment is conducted to test the effectiveness of a social work intervention. The experimental group improves more than does the control group, but the results are not statistically significant. This means that A) the intervention was not effective.
B) the intervention was effective, but not at a significant level.
C) we cannot rule out sampling error in inferring about the effectiveness of the intervention.
D) the results were clinically significant despite not being statistically significant.
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Chapter 23: Writing Research Proposals and Reports
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Sample Questions
Q1) Which of the following statements is FALSE about the purpose of a literature review in a research report? Literature reviews should:
A) point out general agreements and minimize the disagreements among previous researchers.
B) show where your research fits into the general body of scientific knowledge.
C) lay the groundwork for your study.
D) show why your research may have value in the larger scheme of things.
Q2) Before you start writing a research proposal, it is often a good idea to:
A) disregard the expectations of the funding source.
B) try to develop a relationship with a liaison staff member at the funding source.
C) write a very lengthy concept paper detailing preliminary idea.
D) refrain from looking at proposals that have previously been funded by the source you are considering.
Q3) The way research reports should be written depends on the type of audience for which they are intended.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Describe how qualitative research reports often differ from quantitative ones.
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