importance of psychology in social work essay

Psychology And Its Importance In Social Work

importance of psychology in social work essay

The scientific study of human behaviour and mental processes is known as psychology. It has been around since the times of ancient Egypt and Greece, largely as a subset of philosophy. One of the most critical concerns that social work is dealing with today is how to protect people from emotional and physical harm while also giving them the mental space they need to deal with the psychological dangers that many people experience on a daily basis. In the text below, read more about the importance of psychology in social work.

1. What Is the Job of Social Workers?

Social workers frequently deal with situations where there is an ethical or legal component. One of the most crucial qualities for a social worker to possess is a strong ethical compass since it speaks to the fundamental principles of social work. To provide the finest service to their consumers, it is crucial that these professionals take the time to follow the correct procedures and make sure they are thorough. Social work can be a laborious task at times.

The results that you and your clients want to see frequently take time. In social work, patience is crucial, particularly when collaborating with other agencies and organizations to meet the needs of your client.

To do their jobs well, these employees also need to have superior knowledge. To that aim, these individuals can respond to the expanding need for mental health services in society if they have a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree, like a masters in social work online accredited degree, and a license as a clinical social worker. It is occasionally necessary for social workers to make quick, wise, and ethically challenging decisions due to the high-stress situation. For instance, if there are children involved, a social worker is trained to evaluate every aspect, frequently including bias and a lack of healing-centered care in the process.

2. You Have a Better Insight into People

The benefits of studying psychology are numerous when it comes to knowing and tolerating oneself and others. To that end, you can learn and comprehend more about the causes of people's thoughts and behaviours as well as about your own actions and motivations. You'll discover more about the motivations and desires inside each of us. And based on that comprehension, you'll develop more empathy for other people, allowing you to reduce your prejudices towards people who behave differently than you do, which is crucial for social workers.

Knowing what motivates others can assist people in developing harmonious relationships with everyone in their lives, whether they are significant others or people with whom they don't spend much time.

3. It Helps Build Better Relationships

When it comes to improving relationships , which is a key component of social work, psychology offers numerous constructive techniques. These techniques have been shown to be effective in navigating problems like disagreements and negativity. Professionals must be sympathetic, helpful, and socially conscious in order to succeed as social workers. People with a range of issues can get help from social workers. Success in this people-focused professional path depends on having a solid grasp of connection-building.

Well-developed interpersonal skills are essential for social workers since they are in charge of making sure that families, elderly people, and young children are at ease and pleased. A social worker's ability to customize care to people's unique characteristics, such as their cultural background, therapy preferences, attachment style, and religious or spiritual beliefs, is crucial to outcomes. As a result, he or she can approach each case with confidence in terms of what can and cannot be said.

The practice of social work is greatly aided by psychology in areas such as individual and family casework (for example, personality modification in an individual); diagnosing and planning treatment for educational problems in children; individual adjustment to primary and secondary groups; understanding, diagnosing, and changing group behaviour; learning how to interact with people; and accommodating physical and mental patients' medical needs.

4. It Helps Solve Problems

In daily activities as social workers, we turn to psychology to better understand and analyse human behaviour. A social worker must seek out psychology for support while attempting to alter a person's personality through functional or behavioural modification. Psychology aids social work in overcoming adjustment-related issues. The practice of social work uses a social case technique that is influenced by psychology.

Psychology has various social and psychological components that can be applied to group work with the purpose of improving and strengthening the group. Social psychology looks at crowd dynamics, leadership styles, audience behaviour, and other topics that are helpful for organizing groups and, to some extent, communities.

One of the most crucial areas of social work is psychology. Without it, many employees would struggle to come up with the best answers when dealing with issues involving relationships and human behaviour.

Relevance of Psychology in Social Work Practice

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This is a beginner's text to social work published in 1997, which is now out of print. Since the chapters I have posted on academia.edu have proved so popular and I am no longer contracted to the publisher, I am not able to upload an electronic copy of the book, which I hope won't be too outdated.

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The field of social work is concerned with the welfare of others and with social change that promotes social justice. Taking a client-oriented and solution-focused approach, social workers improve individuals’ and families’ social functioning. This approach requires social workers to remain aware of the connections between the individual and societal structures, of the importance of practicing at multiple levels, and of the ways in which theory and practice inform one another. A professional practice is informed and guided by the societal goals and that of the profession concerned, its mission to contribute to the creation of a better society based on professional ethics and code of conduct adopted to regulate practice, the constitution and law of the land, international trends and commitment to address them and covenants, challenges facing the society, the development of new knowledge, method and technology. This implies that no professional practice remains static and confined within a national boundary. Its focus is both local and global. It may be noted here that social practice, which can include citizens’ initiatives, social praxis, movements, protests etc., is broader than any professional practice and social work practice for the matter.

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Psychology for Social Work Theory and Practice (Fourth Edition)

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Ewan Ingleby, Psychology for Social Work Theory and Practice (Fourth Edition), The British Journal of Social Work , Volume 45, Issue 3, April 2015, Pages 1068–1069, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcv010

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The authors outline how psychology can be applied to social work practice within this informative book by reflecting on how psychological theory can be applied to practice. In doing so, attention is drawn to the integral and essential contribution psychology makes to the theory, skills and practice of social work. As opposed to viewing psychology as a component of academic processes, the authors highlight the vibrant characteristics associated with applying psychology to practice. The book is grounded in important themes including theory for practice, skills for practice and theory in practice. This book gives a lively account of how social workers can apply psychology to practice. Chapter 7, in particular, from pages 173 to 190, outlines how psychoanalytical thinking can enhance professional practice by exploring how conscious and unconscious (or ‘overt’ and ‘covert’) messages are conveyed to service users. This enables a number of key themes in psychology and professional practice to be linked together. It allows the book to produce a comprehensive insight into many practical aspects of applying psychology to social work practice. Moreover, the book provides a range of fascinating aspects of psychology that include psychological theories, lifespan development and psychological perspectives on social work organisations. The authors present the reader with a wealth of information. They do this within a well-organised book that is divided into three complementary sections.

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Social Psychology: Definition, Theories, Scope, & Examples

Saul Mcleod, PhD

Editor-in-Chief for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester

Saul Mcleod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc

Associate Editor for Simply Psychology

BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education

Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.

On This Page:

Social psychology is the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings, beliefs, intentions, and goals are constructed within a social context by the actual or imagined interactions with others.

It, therefore, looks at human behavior as influenced by other people and the conditions under which social behavior and feelings occur.

Baron, Byrne, and Suls (1989) define social psychology as “the scientific field that seeks to understand the nature and causes of individual behavior in social situations” (p. 6).

Topics examined in social psychology include the self-concept , social cognition, attribution theory , social influence, group processes, prejudice and discrimination , interpersonal processes, aggression, attitudes , and stereotypes .

Social psychology operates on several foundational assumptions. These fundamental beliefs provide a framework for theories, research, and interpretations.

Individual and Society Interplay : Social psychologists assume an interplay exists between individual minds and the broader social context. An individual’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are continuously shaped by social interactions, and in turn, individuals influence the societies they are a part of.
Behavior is Contextual : One core assumption is that behavior can vary significantly based on the situation or context. While personal traits and dispositions matter, the circumstances or social environment often play a decisive role in determining behavior.
Objective Reality is Difficult to Attain : Our perceptions of reality are influenced by personal beliefs, societal norms, and past experiences. Therefore, our understanding of “reality” is subjective and can be biased or distorted.
Social Reality is Constructed : Social psychologists believe that individuals actively construct their social world . Through processes like social categorization, attribution, and cognitive biases, people create their understanding of others and societal norms.
People are Social Beings with a Need to Belong : A fundamental assumption is the inherent social nature of humans. People have an innate need to connect with others, form relationships, and belong to groups. This need influences a wide range of behaviors and emotions.
Attitudes Influence Behavior : While this might seem straightforward, it’s a foundational belief that our attitudes (combinations of beliefs and feelings) can and often do drive our actions. However, it’s also understood that this relationship can be complex and bidirectional.
People Desire Cognitive Consistency : This is the belief that people are motivated to maintain consistency in their beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Cognitive dissonance theory , which posits that people feel discomfort when holding conflicting beliefs and are motivated to resolve this, is based on this assumption.
People are Motivated to See Themselves in a Positive Light : The self plays a central role in social psychology. It’s assumed that individuals are generally motivated to maintain and enhance a positive self-view.
Behavior Can be Predicted and Understood : An underlying assumption of any science, including social psychology, is that phenomena (in this case, human behavior in social contexts) can be studied, understood, predicted, and potentially influenced.
Cultural and Biological Factors are Integral : Though earlier social psychology might have been criticized for neglecting these factors, contemporary social psychology acknowledges the roles of both biology (genes, hormones, brain processes) and culture (norms, values, traditions) in shaping social behavior.

Early Influences

Aristotle believed that humans were naturally sociable, a necessity that allows us to live together (an individual-centered approach), whilst Plato felt that the state controlled the individual and encouraged social responsibility through social context (a socio-centered approach).

Hegel (1770–1831) introduced the concept that society has inevitable links with the development of the social mind. This led to the idea of a group mind, which is important in the study of social psychology.

Lazarus & Steinthal wrote about Anglo-European influences in 1860. “Volkerpsychologie” emerged, which focused on the idea of a collective mind.

It emphasized the notion that personality develops because of cultural and community influences, especially through language, which is both a social product of the community as well as a means of encouraging particular social thought in the individual. Therefore Wundt (1900–1920) encouraged the methodological study of language and its influence on the social being.

Early Texts

Texts focusing on social psychology first emerged in the 20th century. McDougall published the first notable book in English in 1908 (An Introduction to Social Psychology), which included chapters on emotion and sentiment, morality, character, and religion, quite different from those incorporated in the field today.

He believed social behavior was innate/instinctive and, therefore, individual, hence his choice of topics. This belief is not the principle upheld in modern social psychology, however.

Allport’s work (1924) underpins current thinking to a greater degree, as he acknowledged that social behavior results from interactions between people.

He also took a methodological approach, discussing actual research and emphasizing that the field was a “science … which studies the behavior of the individual in so far as his behavior stimulates other individuals, or is itself a reaction to this behavior” (1942: p. 12).

His book also dealt with topics still evident today, such as emotion, conformity, and the effects of an audience on others.

Murchison (1935) published The first handbook on social psychology was published by Murchison in 1935. Murphy & Murphy (1931/37) produced a book summarizing the findings of 1,000 studies in social psychology. A text by Klineberg (1940) looked at the interaction between social context and personality development. By the 1950s, several texts were available on the subject.

Journal Development

• 1950s – Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

• 1963 – Journal of Personality, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

• 1965 – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

• 1971 – Journal of Applied Social Psychology, European Journal of Social Psychology

• 1975 – Social Psychology Quarterly, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

• 1982 – Social Cognition

• 1984 – Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

Early Experiments

There is some disagreement about the first true experiment, but the following are certainly among some of the most important.

Triplett (1898) applied the experimental method to investigate the performance of cyclists and schoolchildren on how the presence of others influences overall performance – thus, how individuals are affected and behave in the social context.

By 1935, the study of social norms had developed, looking at how individuals behave according to the rules of society. This was conducted by Sherif (1935).

Lewin et al. then began experimental research into leadership and group processes by 1939, looking at effective work ethics under different leadership styles.

Later Developments

Much of the key research in social psychology developed following World War II, when people became interested in the behavior of individuals when grouped together and in social situations. Key studies were carried out in several areas.

Some studies focused on how attitudes are formed, changed by the social context, and measured to ascertain whether a change has occurred.

Amongst some of the most famous works in social psychology is that on obedience conducted by Milgram in his “electric shock” study, which looked at the role an authority figure plays in shaping behavior. Similarly, Zimbardo’s prison simulation notably demonstrated conformity to given roles in the social world.

Wider topics then began to emerge, such as social perception, aggression, relationships, decision-making, pro-social behavior, and attribution, many of which are central to today’s topics and will be discussed throughout this website.

Thus, the growth years of social psychology occurred during the decades following the 1940s.

The scope of social psychology is vast, reflecting the myriad ways social factors intertwine with individual cognition and behavior.

Its principles and findings resonate in virtually every area of human interaction, making it a vital field for understanding and improving the human experience.

Interpersonal Relationships : This covers attraction, love, jealousy, friendship, and group dynamics. Understanding how and why relationships form and the factors that contribute to their maintenance or dissolution is central to this domain.
Attitude Formation and Change : How do individuals form opinions and attitudes? What methods can effectively change them? This scope includes the study of persuasion, propaganda, and cognitive dissonance.
Social Cognition : This examines how people process, store, and apply information about others. Areas include social perception, heuristics, stereotypes, and attribution theories.
Social Influence : The study of conformity, compliance, obedience, and the myriad ways individuals influence one another falls within this domain.
Group Dynamics : This entails studying group behavior, intergroup relations, group decision-making processes, leadership, and more. Concepts like groupthink and group polarization emerge from this area.
Prejudice and Discrimination : Understanding the roots of bias, racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice, as well as exploring interventions to reduce them, is a significant focus.
Self and Identity : Investigating self-concept, self-esteem, self-presentation, and the social construction of identity are all part of this realm.
Prosocial Behavior and Altruism : Why do individuals sometimes help others, even at a cost to themselves? This area delves into the motivations and conditions that foster cooperative and altruistic behavior.
Aggression : From understanding the underlying causes of aggressive behavior to studying societal factors that exacerbate or mitigate aggression, this topic seeks to dissect the nature of hostile actions.
Cultural and Cross-cultural Dimensions : As societies become more interconnected, understanding cultural influences on behavior, cognition, and emotion is crucial. This area compares and contrasts behaviors across different cultures and societal groups.
Environmental and Applied Settings : Social psychology principles find application in health psychology, environmental behavior, organizational behavior, consumer behavior, and more.
Social Issues : Social psychologists might study the impact of societal structures on individual behavior, exploring topics like poverty, urban stress, and crime.
Education : Principles of social psychology enhance teaching methods, address issues of classroom dynamics, and promote effective learning.
Media and Technology : In the digital age, understanding the effects of media consumption, the dynamics of online communication, and the formation of online communities is increasingly relevant.
Law : Insights from social psychology inform areas such as jury decision-making, eyewitness testimony, and legal procedures.
Health : Concepts from social psychology are employed to promote health behaviors, understand doctor-patient dynamics, and tackle issues like addiction.

Example Theories

Allport (1920) – social facilitation.

Allport introduced the notion that the presence of others (the social group) can facilitate certain behavior.

It was found that an audience would improve an actor’s performance in well-learned/easy tasks but leads to a decrease in performance on newly learned/difficult tasks due to social inhibition.

Bandura (1963) Social Learning Theory

Bandura introduced the notion that behavior in the social world could be modeled. Three groups of children watched a video where an adult was aggressive towards a ‘bobo doll,’ and the adult was either just seen to be doing this, was rewarded by another adult for their behavior, or was punished for it.

Children who had seen the adult rewarded were found to be more likely to copy such behavior.

Festinger (1950) – Cognitive Dissonance

Festinger, Schacter, and Black brought up the idea that when we hold beliefs, attitudes, or cognitions which are different, then we experience dissonance – this is an inconsistency that causes discomfort.

We are motivated to reduce this by either changing one of our thoughts, beliefs, or attitudes or selectively attending to information that supports one of our beliefs and ignores the other (selective exposure hypothesis).

Dissonance occurs when there are difficult choices or decisions or when people participate in behavior that is contrary to their attitude. Dissonance is thus brought about by effort justification (when aiming to reach a modest goal), induced compliance (when people are forced to comply contrary to their attitude), and free choice (when weighing up decisions).

Tajfel (1971) – Social Identity Theory

When divided into artificial (minimal) groups, prejudice results simply from the awareness that there is an “out-group” (the other group).

When the boys were asked to allocate points to others (which might be converted into rewards) who were either part of their own group or the out-group, they displayed a strong in-group preference. That is, they allocated more points on the set task to boys who they believed to be in the same group as themselves.

This can be accounted for by Tajfel & Turner’s social identity theory, which states that individuals need to maintain a positive sense of personal and social identity: this is partly achieved by emphasizing the desirability of one’s own group, focusing on distinctions between other “lesser” groups.

Weiner (1986) – Attribution Theory

Weiner was interested in the attributions made for experiences of success and failure and introduced the idea that we look for explanations of behavior in the social world.

He believed that these were made based on three areas: locus, which could be internal or external; stability, which is whether the cause is stable or changes over time: and controllability.

Milgram (1963) – Shock Experiment

Participants were told that they were taking part in a study on learning but always acted as the teacher when they were then responsible for going over paired associate learning tasks.

When the learner (a stooge) got the answer wrong, they were told by a scientist that they had to deliver an electric shock. This did not actually happen, although the participant was unaware of this as they had themselves a sample (real!) shock at the start of the experiment.

They were encouraged to increase the voltage given after each incorrect answer up to a maximum voltage, and it was found that all participants gave shocks up to 300v, with 65 percent reaching the highest level of 450v.

It seems that obedience is most likely to occur in an unfamiliar environment and in the presence of an authority figure, especially when covert pressure is put upon people to obey. It is also possible that it occurs because the participant felt that someone other than themselves was responsible for their actions.

Haney, Banks, Zimbardo (1973) – Stanford Prison Experiment

Volunteers took part in a simulation where they were randomly assigned the role of a prisoner or guard and taken to a converted university basement resembling a prison environment. There was some basic loss of rights for the prisoners, who were unexpectedly arrested, and given a uniform and an identification number (they were therefore deindividuated).

The study showed that conformity to social roles occurred as part of the social interaction, as both groups displayed more negative emotions, and hostility and dehumanization became apparent.

Prisoners became passive, whilst the guards assumed an active, brutal, and dominant role. Although normative and informational social influence played a role here, deindividuation/the loss of a sense of identity seemed most likely to lead to conformity.

Both this and Milgram’s study introduced the notion of social influence and the ways in which this could be observed/tested.

Provides Clear Predictions

As a scientific discipline, social psychology prioritizes formulating clear and testable hypotheses. This clarity facilitates empirical testing, ensuring the field’s findings are based on observable and quantifiable phenomena.

The Asch conformity experiments hypothesized that individuals would conform to a group’s incorrect judgment.

The clear prediction allowed for controlled experimentation to determine the extent and conditions of such conformity.

Emphasizes Objective Measurement

Social psychology leans heavily on empirical methods, emphasizing objectivity. This means that results are less influenced by biases or subjective interpretations.

Double-blind procedures , controlled settings, and standardized measures in many social psychology experiments ensure that results are replicable and less prone to experimenter bias.

Empirical Evidence

Over the years, a multitude of experiments in social psychology have bolstered the credibility of its theories. This experimental validation lends weight to its findings and claims.

The robust body of experimental evidence supporting cognitive dissonance theory, from Festinger’s initial studies to more recent replications, showcases the theory’s enduring strength and relevance.

Limitations

Underestimates individual differences.

While social psychology often looks at broad trends and general behaviors, it can sometimes gloss over individual differences.

Not everyone conforms, obeys, or reacts in the same way, and these nuanced differences can be critical.

While Milgram’s obedience experiments showcased a startling rate of compliance to authority, there were still participants who resisted, and their reasons and characteristics are equally important to understand.

Ignores Biology

While social psychology focuses on the social environment’s impact on behavior, early theories sometimes neglect the biological underpinnings that play a role.

Hormones, genetics, and neurological factors can influence behavior and might intersect with social factors in complex ways.

The role of testosterone in aggressive behavior is a clear instance where biology intersects with the social. Ignoring such biological components can lead to an incomplete understanding.

Superficial Snapshots of Social Processes

Social psychology sometimes offers a narrow view, capturing only a momentary slice of a broader, evolving process. This might mean that the field fails to capture the depth, evolution, or intricacies of social processes over time.

A study might capture attitudes towards a social issue at a single point in time, but not account for the historical evolution, future shifts, or deeper societal underpinnings of those attitudes.

Allport, F. H. (1920). The influence of the group upon association and thought. Journal of Experimental Psychology , 3(3), 159.

Allport, F. H. (1924). Response to social stimulation in the group. Social psychology , 260-291.

Allport, F. H. (1942). Methods in the study of collective action phenomena. The Journal of Social Psychology , 15(1), 165-185.

Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1963). Vicarious reinforcement and imitative learning. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 67(6), 601.

Baron, R. A., Byrne, D., & Suls, J. (1989). Attitudes: Evaluating the social world. Baron et al, Social Psychology . 3rd edn. MA: Allyn and Bacon, 79-101.

Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (1950). Social processes in informal groups .

Haney, C., Banks, W. C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1973). Study of prisoners and guards in a simulated prison. Naval Research Reviews , 9(1-17).

Klineberg, O. (1940). The problem of personality .

Krewer, B., & Jahoda, G. (1860). On the scope of Lazarus and Steinthals “Völkerpsychologie” as reflected in the. Zeitschrift für Völkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, 1890, 4-12.

Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. K. (1939). Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created “social climates”. The Journal of Social Psychology , 10(2), 269-299.

Mcdougall, W. (1908). An introduction to social psychology . Londres: Methuen.

Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology , 67(4), 371.

Murchison, C. (1935). A handbook of social psychology .

Murphy, G., & Murphy, L. B. (1931). Experimental social psychology .

Sherif, M. (1935). A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology (Columbia University).

Tajfel, H., Billig, M. G., Bundy, R. P., & Flament, C. (1971). Social categorization and intergroup behavior. European journal of social psychology , 1(2), 149-178.

Triplett, N. (1898). The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American journal of Psychology , 9(4), 507-533.

Weiner, B. (1986). An attributional theory of motivation and emotion . New York: Springer-Verlag.

Social Science

Hard Determinism: Philosophy & Examples (Does Free Will Exist?)

Functions of Attitude Theory

Understanding Conformity: Normative vs. Informational Social Influence

Social Control Theory of Crime

Emotions , Mood , Social Science

Emotional Labor: Definition, Examples, Types, and Consequences

Famous Experiments , Social Science

Solomon Asch Conformity Line Experiment Study

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The Pursuit of Quality for Social Work Practice: Three Generations and Counting

Enola proctor.

Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor and director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research at Washington University in St. Louis

Social work addresses some of the most complex and intractable human and social problems: poverty, mental illness, addiction, homelessness, and child abuse. Our field may be distinct among professions for its efforts to ameliorate the toughest societal problems, experienced by society’s most vulnerable, while working from under-resourced institutions and settings. Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for rigorous assessment and evaluation.

Moreover, social work confronts these challenges as it is ethically bound to deliver high-quality services. Policy and regulatory requirements increasingly demand that social work deliver and document the effectiveness of highest quality interventions and restrict reimbursement to those services that are documented as evidence based. Social work’s future, its very survival, depends on our ability to deliver services with a solid base of evidence and to document their effectiveness. In the words of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW; n.d.) , social work seeks to “champion social progress powered by science.” The research community needs to support practice through innovative and rigorous science that advances the evidence for interventions to address social work’s grand challenges.

My work seeks to improve the quality of social work practice by pursuing answers to three questions:

What interventions and services are most effective and thus should be delivered in social work practice?
How do we measure the impact of those interventions and services? (That is, what outcomes do our interventions achieve?)
How do we implement the highest quality interventions?

This paper describes this work, demonstrates the substantive and methodological progression across the three questions, assesses what we have learned, and forecasts a research agenda for what we still need to learn. Given Aaron Rosen’s role as my PhD mentor and our many years of collaboration, the paper also addresses the role of research mentoring in advancing our profession’s knowledge base.

What Interventions and Services Are Most Effective?

Answering the question “What services are effective?” requires rigorous testing of clearly specified interventions. The first paper I coauthored with Aaron Rosen—“Specifying the Treatment Process: The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 )—provided a framework for evaluating intervention effectiveness. At that time, process and outcomes were jumbled and intertwined concepts. Social work interventions were rarely specified beyond theoretical orientation or level of focus: casework (or direct practice); group work; and macro practice, which included community, agency-level, and policy-focused practice. Moreover, interventions were not named, nor were their components clearly identified. We recognized that gross descriptions of interventions obstruct professional training, preclude fidelity assessment, and prevent accurate tests of effectiveness. Thus, in a series of papers, Rosen and I advocated that social work interventions be specified, clearly labeled, and operationally defined, measured, and tested.

Specifying Interventions

Such specification of interventions is essential to two professional responsibilities: professional education and demonstrating the effectiveness of the field’s interventions. Without specification, interventions cannot be taught. Social work education is all about equipping students with skills to deliver interventions, programs, services, administrative practices, and policies. Teaching interventions requires an ability to name, define, see them in action, measure their presence (or absence), assess the fidelity with which they are delivered, and give feedback to students on how to increase or refine the associated skills.

To advance testing the effectiveness of social work interventions, we drew distinctions between interventions and outcomes and proposed these two constructs as the foci for effectiveness research. We defined interventions as practitioner behaviors that can be volitionally manipulated by practitioners (used or not, varied in intensity and timing), that are defined in detail, can be reliably measured, and can be linked to specific identified outcomes ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ; Rosen & Proctor, 1981 ). This definition foreshadowed the development of treatment manuals, lists of specific evidence-based practices, and calls for monitoring intervention fidelity. Recognizing the variety of intervention types, and to advance their more precise definition and measurement, we proposed that interventions be distinguished in terms of their complexity. Interventive responses comprise discrete or single responses, such as affirmation, expression of empathy, or positive reinforcement. Interventive strategies comprise several different actions that are, together, linked to a designated outcome, such as motivational interviewing. Most complex are interventive programs , which are a variety of intervention actions organized and integrated as a total treatment package; collaborative care for depression or community assertive treatment are examples. To strengthen the professional knowledge base, we also called for social work effectiveness research to begin testing the optimal dose and sequencing of intervention components in relation to attainment of desired outcomes.

Advancing Intervention Effectiveness Research

Our “specifying paper” also was motivated by the paucity of literature at that time on actual social work interventions. Our literature review of 13 major social work journals over 5 years of published research revealed that only 15% of published social work research addressed interventions. About a third of studies described social problems, and about half explored factors associated with the problem ( Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). Most troubling was our finding that only 3% of articles described the intervention or its components in sufficient detail for replication in either research or practice. Later, Fraser (2004) found intervention research to comprise only about one fourth of empirical studies in social work. Fortunately, our situation has improved. Intervention research is more frequent in social work publications, thanks largely to the publication policies of the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research and Research on Social Work Practice .

Research Priorities

Social work faces important and formidable challenges as it advances research on intervention effectiveness. The practitioner who searches the literature or various intervention lists can find more than 500 practices that are named or that are shown to have evidence from rigorous trials that passes a bar to qualify as evidence-based practices. However, our profession still lacks any organized compendium or taxonomy of interventions that are employed in or found to be effective for social work practice. Existing lists of evidence-based practices, although necessary, are insufficient for social work for several reasons. First, as a 2015 National Academies Institute of Medicine (IOM) report—“Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards” ( IOM, 2015 )—concluded, too few evidence-based practices have been found to be appropriate for low-resource settings or acceptable to minority groups. Second, existing interventions do not adequately reflect the breadth of social work practice. We have too few evidence-based interventions that can inform effective community organization, case management, referral practice, resource development, administrative practice, or policy. Noting that there is far less literature on evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice, a social work task force responding to the 2015 IOM report recommended that this gap be a target of our educational and research efforts ( National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work, 2016 ). And finally, our field—along with other professions that deliver psychosocial interventions—lacks the kinds of procedure codes that can identify the specific interventions we deliver. Documenting social work activities in agency records is increasingly essential for quality assurance and third-party reimbursement.

Future Directions: Research to Advance Evidence on Interventions

Social work has critically important research needs. Our field needs to advance the evidence base on what interventions work for social work populations, practices, and settings. Responding to the 2015 IOM report, the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) identified as a social work priority the development and testing of evidence-based practices relevant to organizational, community, and policy practice. As we advance our intervention effectiveness research, we must respond to the challenge of determining the key mechanisms of change ( National Institute of Mental Health, 2016 ) and identify key modifiable components of packaged interventions ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). We need to explore the optimal dosage, ordering, or adapted bundling of intervention elements and advance robust, feasible ways to measure and increase fidelity ( Jaccard, 2016 ). We also need to conduct research on which interventions are most appropriate, acceptable, and effective with various client groups ( Zayas, 2003 ; Videka, 2003 ).

Documenting the Impact of Interventions: Specifying and Measuring Outcomes

Outcomes are key to documenting the impact of social work interventions. My 1978 “specifying” paper with Rosen emphasized that the effectiveness of social work practice could not be adequately evaluated without clear specification and measurement of various types of outcomes. In that paper, we argued that the profession cannot rely only on an assertion of effectiveness. The field must also calibrate, calculate, and communicate its impact.

The nursing profession’s highly successful campaign, based on outcomes research, positioned that field to claim that “nurses save lives.” Nurse staffing ratios were associated with in-hospital and 30-day mortality, independent of patient characteristics, hospital characteristics, or medical treatment ( Person et al., 2004 ). In contrast, social work has often described—sometimes advertised—itself as the low-cost profession. The claim of “cheapest service” may have some strategic advantage in turf competition with other professions. But social work can do better. Our research base can and should demonstrate the value of our work by naming and quantifying the outcomes—the added value of social work interventions.

As a start to this work—a beginning step in compiling evidence about the impact of social work interventions—our team set out to identify the outcomes associated with social work practice. We felt that identifying and naming outcomes is essential for conveying what social work is about. Moreover, outcomes should serve as the focus for evaluating the effectiveness of social work interventions.

We produced two taxonomies of outcomes reflected in published evaluations of social work interventions ( Proctor, Rosen, & Rhee, 2002 ; Rosen, Proctor, & Staudt, 2003 ). They included such outcomes as change in clients’ social functioning, resource procurement, problem or symptom reduction, and safety. They exemplify the importance of naming and measuring what our profession can contribute to society. Although social work’s growing body of effectiveness research typically reports outcomes of the interventions being tested, the literature has not, in the intervening 20 years, addressed the collective set of outcomes for our field.

Fortunately, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (AASWSW, n.d.) now provide a framework for communicating social work’s goals. They reflect social work’s added value: improving individual and family well-being, strengthening social fabric, and helping to create a more just society. The Grand Challenges for Social Work include ensuring healthy development for all youth, closing the health gap, stopping family violence, advancing long and productive lives, eradicating social isolation, ending homelessness, creating social responses to a changing environment, harnessing technology for social good, promoting smart decarceration, reducing extreme economic inequality, building financial capability for all, and achieving equal opportunity and justice ( AASWSW, n.d. ).

These important goals appropriately reflect much of what we are all about in social work, and our entire field has been galvanized—energized by the power of these grand challenges. However, the grand challenges require setting specific benchmarks—targets that reflect how far our professional actions can expect to take us, or in some areas, how far we have come in meeting the challenge.

For the past decade, care delivery systems and payment reforms have required measures for tracking performance. Quality measures have become critical tools for all service providers and organizations ( IOM, 2015 ). The IOM defines quality of care as “the degree to which … services for individuals and populations increase the likelihood of desired … outcomes and are consistent with current professional knowledge” ( Lohr, 1990 , p. 21). Quality measures are important at multiple levels of service delivery: at the client level, at the practitioner level, at the organization level, and at the policy level. The National Quality Forum has established five criteria for quality measures: They should address (a) the most important, (b) the most scientifically valid, (c) the most feasible or least burdensome, (d) the most usable, and (e) the most harmonious set of measures ( IOM, 2015 .) Quality measures have been advanced by accrediting groups (e.g., the Joint Commission of the National Committee for Quality Assurance), professional societies, and federal agencies, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. However, quality measures are lacking for key areas of social work practice, including mental health and substance-use treatment. And of the 55 nationally endorsed measures related to mental health and substance use, only two address a psychosocial intervention. Measures used for accreditation and certification purposes often reflect structural capabilities of organizations and their resource use, not the infrastructure required to deliver high-quality services ( IOM, 2015 ). I am not aware of any quality measure developed by our own professional societies or agreed upon across our field.

Future Directions: Research on Quality Monitoring and Measure Development

Although social work as a field lacks a strong tradition of measuring and assessing quality ( Megivern et al., 2007 ; McMillen et al., 2005 ; Proctor, Powell, & McMillen, 2012 ), social work’s role in the quality workforce is becoming better understood ( McMillen & Raffol, 2016 ). The small number of established and endorsed quality measures reflects both limitations in the evidence for effective interventions and challenges in obtaining the detailed information necessary to support quality measurement ( IOM, 2015 ). According to the National Task Force on Evidence-Based Practice in Social Work (2016) , developing quality measures to capture use of evidence-based interventions is essential for the survival of social work practice in many settings. The task force recommends that social work organizations develop relevant and viable quality measures and that social workers actively influence the implementation of quality measures in their practice settings.

How to Implement Evidence-Based Care

A third and more recent focus of my work addresses this question: How do we implement evidence-based care in agencies and communities? Despite our progress in developing proven interventions, most clients—whether served by social workers or other providers—do not receive evidence-based care. A growing number of studies are assessing the extent to which clients—in specific settings or communities—receive evidence-based interventions. Kohl, Schurer, and Bellamy (2009) examined quality in a core area of social work: training for parents at risk for child maltreatment. The team examined the parent services and their level of empirical support in community agencies, staffed largely by master’s-level social workers. Of 35 identified treatment programs offered to families, only 11% were “well-established empirically supported interventions,” with another 20% containing some hallmarks of empirically supported interventions ( Kohl et al., 2009 ). This study reveals a sizable implementation gap, with most of the programs delivered lacking scientific validation.

Similar quality gaps are apparent in other settings where social workers deliver services. Studies show that only 19.3% of school mental health professionals and 36.8% of community mental health professionals working in Virginia’s schools and community mental health centers report using any evidence-based substance-abuse prevention programs ( Evans, Koch, Brady, Meszaros, & Sadler, 2013 ). In mental health, where social workers have long delivered the bulk of services, only 40% to 50% of people with mental disorders receive any treatment ( Kessler, Chiu, Demler, Merikangas, & Walters, 2005 ; Merikangas et al., 2011 ), and of those receiving treatment, a fraction receive what could be considered “quality” treatment ( Wang, Demler, & Kessler, 2002 ; Wang et al., 2005 ). These and other studies indicate that, despite progress in developing proven interventions, most clients do not receive evidence-based care. In light of the growth of evidence-based practice, this fact is troubling evidence that testing interventions and publishing the findings is not sufficient to improve quality.

So, how do we get these interventions in place? What is needed to enable social workers to deliver, and clients to receive, high-quality care? In addition to developing and testing evidence-based interventions, what else is needed to improve the quality of social work practice? My work has focused on advancing quality of services through two paths.

Making Effective Interventions Accessible to Providers: Intervention Reviews and Taxonomies

First, we have advocated that research evidence be synthesized and made available to front-line practitioners. In a research-active field where new knowledge is constantly produced, practitioners should not be expected to rely on journal publications alone for information about effective approaches to achieve desired outcomes. Mastering a rapidly expanding professional evidence base has been characterized as a nearly unachievable challenge for practitioners ( Greenfield, 2017 ). Reviews should critique and clarify the intervention’s effectiveness as tested in specific settings, populations, and contexts, answering the question, “What works where, and with whom?” Even more valuable are studies of comparative effectiveness—those that answer, “Which intervention approach works better, where, and when?”

Taxonomies of clearly and consistently labeled interventions will enhance their accessibility and the usefulness of research reports and systematic reviews. A pre-requisite is the consistent naming of interventions. A persistent challenge is the wide variation in names or labels for interventive procedures and programs. Our professional activities are the basis for our societal sanction, and they must be capable of being accurately labeled and documented if we are to describe what our profession “does” to advance social welfare. Increasingly, and in short order, that documentation will be in electronic records that are scrutinized by third parties for purposes of reimbursement and assessment of value toward outcome attainment.

How should intervention research and reviews be organized? Currently, several websites provide lists of evidence-based practices, some with links, citations, or information about dissemination and implementation organizations that provide training and facilitation to adopters. Practitioners and administrators find such lists helpful but often note the challenge in determining which are most appropriate for their needs. In the words of one agency leader, “The drug companies are great at presenting [intervention information] in a very easy form to use. We don’t have people coming and saying, ‘Ah, let me tell you about the best evidence-based practice for cognitive behavioral therapy for depression,’” ( Proctor et al., 2007 , p. 483). We have called for the field to devise decision aids for practitioners to enhance access to the best available empirical knowledge about interventions ( Proctor et al., 2002 ; Proctor & Rosen, 2008 ; Rosen et al., 2003 ). We proposed that intervention taxonomies be organized around outcomes pursued in social work practice, and we developed such a taxonomy based on eight domains of outcomes—those most frequently tested in social work journals. Given the field’s progress in identifying its grand challenges, its associated outcomes could well serve as the organizing focus, with research-tested interventions listed for each challenge. Compiling the interventions, programs, and services that are shown—through research—to help achieve one of the challenges would surely advance our field.

We further urged profession-wide efforts to develop social work practice guidelines from intervention taxonomies ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Practice guidelines are systematically compiled, critiqued, and organized statements about the effectiveness of interventions that are organized in a way to help practitioners select and use the most effective and appropriate approaches for addressing client problems and pursuing desired outcomes.

At that time, we proposed that our published taxonomy of social work interventions could provide a beginning architecture for social work guidelines ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). In 2000, we organized a conference for thought leaders in social work practice. This talented group wrestled with and formulated recommendations for tackling the professional, research, and training requisites to developing social work practice guidelines to enable researchers to access and apply the best available knowledge about interventions ( Rosen et al., 2003 ). Fifteen years later, however, the need remains for social work to synthesize its intervention research. Psychology and psychiatry, along with most fields of medical practice, have developed practice guidelines. Although their acceptance and adherence is fraught with challenges, guidelines make evidence more accessible and enable quality monitoring. Yet, guidelines still do not exist for social work.

The 2015 IOM report, “Psychosocial Interventions for Mental and Substance Use Disorders: A Framework for Establishing Evidence-Based Standards,” includes a conclusion that information on the effectiveness of psychosocial interventions is not routinely available to service consumers, providers, and payers, nor is it synthesized. That 2015 IOM report called for systematic reviews to inform clinical guidelines for psychosocial interventions. This report defined psychosocial interventions broadly, encompassing “interpersonal or informational activities, techniques, or strategies that target biological, behavioral, cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, social, or environmental factors with the aim of reducing symptoms and improving functioning or well-being” ( IOM, 2015 , p. 5). These interventions are social work’s domain; they are delivered in the very settings where social workers dominate (behavioral health, schools, criminal justice, child welfare, and immigrant services); and they encompass populations across the entire lifespan within all sociodemographic groups and vulnerable populations. Accordingly, the National Task Force on Evidence Based Practice in Social Work (2016) has recommended the conduct of more systematic reviews of the evidence supporting social work interventions.

If systematic reviews are to lead to guidelines for evidence-based psychosocial interventions, social work needs to be at the table, and social work research must provide the foundation. Whether social work develops its own guidelines or helps lead the development of profession-independent guidelines as recommended by the IOM committee, guidelines need to be detailed enough to guide practice. That is, they need to be accompanied by treatment manuals and informed by research that details the effect of moderator variables and contextual factors reflecting diverse clientele, social determinants of health, and setting resource challenges. The IOM report “Clinical Practice Guidelines We Can Trust” sets criteria for guideline development processes ( IOM, 2011 ). Moreover, social work systematic reviews of research and any associated evidence-based guidelines need to be organized around meaningful taxonomies.

Advancing the Science of Implementation

As a second path to ensuring the delivery of high-quality care, my research has focused on advancing the science of implementation. Implementation research seeks to inform how to deliver evidence-based interventions, programs, and policies into real-world settings so their benefits can be realized and sustained. The ultimate aim of implementation research is building a base of evidence about the most effective processes and strategies for improving service delivery. Implementation research builds upon effectiveness research then seeks to discover how to use specific implementation strategies and move those interventions into specific settings, extending their availability, reach, and benefits to clients and communities. Accordingly, implementation strategies must address the challenges of the service system (e.g., specialty mental health, schools, criminal justice system, health settings) and practice settings (e.g., community agency, national employee assistance programs, office-based practice), and the human capital challenge of staff training and support.

In an approach that echoes themes in an early paper, “Specifying the Treatment Process—The Basis for Effectiveness Research” ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ), my work once again tackled the challenge of specifying a heretofore vague process—this time, not the intervention process, but the implementation process. As a first step, our team developed a taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), which enable a direct test of whether or not a given intervention is adopted and delivered. Although it is overlooked in other types of research, implementation science focuses on this distinct type of outcome. Explicit examination of implementation outcomes is key to an important research distinction. Often, evaluations yield disappointing results about an intervention, showing that the expected and desired outcomes are not attained. This might mean that the intervention was not effective. However, just as likely, it could mean that the intervention was not actually delivered, or it was not delivered with fidelity. Implementation outcomes help identify the roadblocks on the way to intervention adoption and delivery.

Our 2011 taxonomy of implementation outcomes ( Proctor et al., 2011 ), became the framework for two national repositories of measures for implementation research: the Seattle Implementation Research Collaborative ( Lewis et al., 2015 ) and the National Institutes of Health GEM measures database ( Rabin et al., 2012 ). These repositories of implementation outcomes seek to harmonize and increase the rigor of measurement in implementation science.

We also have developed taxonomies of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2012 ; Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 , 2015) . Implementation strategies are interventions for system change—how organizations, communities, and providers can learn to deliver new and more effective practices ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

A conversation with a key practice leader stimulated my interest in implementation strategies. Shortly after our school endorsed an MSW curriculum emphasizing evidence-based practices, a pioneering CEO of a major social service agency in St. Louis met with me and asked,

Enola Proctor, I get the importance of delivering evidence based practices. My organization delivers over 20 programs and interventions, and I believe only a handful of them are really evidence based. I want to decrease our provision of ineffective care, and increase our delivery of evidence-based practices. But how? What are the evidence-based ways I, as an agency director, can transform my agency so that we can deliver evidence-based practices?

That agency director was asking a question of how . He was asking for evidence-based implementation strategies. Moving effective programs and practices into routine care settings requires the skillful use of implementation strategies, defined as systematic “methods or techniques used to enhance the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of a clinical program or practice into routine service” ( Proctor et al., 2013 , p. 2).

This question has shaped my work for the past 15 years, as well as the research priorities of several funding agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, and the World Health Organization. Indeed, a National Institutes of Health program announcement—Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health ( National Institutes of Health, 2016 )—identified the discovery of effective implementation strategies as a primary purpose of implementation science. To date, the implementation science literature cannot yet answer that important question, but we are making progress.

To identify implementation strategies, our teams first turned to the literature—a literature that we found to be scattered across a wide range of journals and disciplines. Most articles were not empirical, and most articles used widely differing terms to characterize implementation strategies. We conducted a structured literature review to generate common nomenclature and a taxonomy of implementation strategies. That review yielded 63 distinct implementation strategies, which fell into six groupings: planning, educating, financing, restructuring, managing quality, and attending to policy context ( Powell et al., 2012 ).

Our team refined that compilation, using Delphi techniques and concept mapping to develop conceptually distinct categories of implementation strategies ( Powell et al., 2015 ; Waltz et al., 2014 ). The refined compilation of 73 discrete implementation strategies was then further organized into nine clusters:

changing agency infrastructure,
using financial strategies,
supporting clinicians,
providing interactive assistance,
training and educating stakeholders,
adapting and tailoring interventions to context,
developing stakeholder relationships,
using evaluative and iterative strategies, and
engaging consumers.

These taxonomies of implementation strategies position the field for more robust research on implementation processes. The language used to describe implementation strategies has not yet “gelled” and has been described as a “Tower of Babel” ( McKibbon et al., 2010 ). Therefore, we also developed guidelines for reporting the components of strategies ( Proctor et al., 2013 ) so researchers and implementers would have more behaviorally specific information about what a strategy is, who does it, when, and for how long. The value of such reporting guidelines is illustrated in the work of Gold and colleagues (2016) .

What have we learned, through our own program of research on implementation strategies—the “how to” of improving practice? First, we have been able to identify from practice-based evidence the implementation strategies used most often. Using novel activity logs to track implementation strategies, Bunger and colleagues (2017) found that strategies such as quality improvement tools, using data experts, providing supervision, and sending clinical reminders were frequently used to facilitate delivery of behavioral health interventions within a child-welfare setting and were perceived by agency leadership as contributing to project success.

Second, reflecting the complexity of quality improvement processes, we have learned that there is no magic bullet ( Powell, Proctor, & Glass, 2013 ). Our study of U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs clinics working to implement evidence-based HIV treatment found that implementers used an average of 25 (plus or minus 14) different implementation strategies ( Rogal, et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the number of implementation strategies used was positively associated with the number of new treatment starts. These findings suggest that implementing new interventions requires considerable effort and resources.

To advance our understanding of the effectiveness of implementation strategies, our teams have conducted a systematic review ( Powell et al., 2013 ), tested specific strategies, and captured practice-based evidence from on-the-ground implementers. Testing the effectiveness of implementation strategies has been identified as a top research priority by the IOM (2009) . In work with Charles Glisson in St. Louis, our 15-agency-based randomized clinical trial found that an organizational-focused intervention—the attachment, regulatory, and competency model—improved agency culture and climate, stimulated more clinicians to enroll in evidence-based-practice training, and boosted clinical effect sizes of various evidence-based practices ( Glisson, Williams, Hemmelgarn, Proctor, & Green, 2016a , 2016b ). And in a hospital critical care unit, the implementation strategies of developing a team, selecting and using champions, provider education sessions, and audit and feedback helped increase team adherence to phlebotomy guidelines ( Steffen et al., in press ).

We are also learning about the value of different strategies. Experts in implementation science and implementation practice identified as most important the strategies of “use evaluate and iterative approaches” and “train and educate stakeholders.” Reported as less helpful were such strategies as “access new funding streams” and “remind clinicians of practices to use” ( Waltz et al., 2015 ). Successful implementers in Veterans Affairs clinics relied more heavily on such strategies as “change physical structures and equipment” and “facilitate relay of clinical data to providers” than did less successful implementers ( Rogal et al., 2017 ).

Many strategies have yet to be investigated empirically, as has the role of dissemination and implementation organizations—organizations that function to promote, provide information about, provide training in, and scale up specific treatments. Most evidence-based practices used in behavioral health, including most listed on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration National Registry of Promising and Effective Practices, are disseminated and distributed by dissemination and implementation organizations. Unlike drugs and devices, psychosocial interventions have no Federal Drug Administration-like delivery system. Kreuter and Casey (2012) urge better understanding and use of the intervention “delivery system,” or mechanisms to bring treatment discoveries to the attention of practitioners and into use in practice settings.

Implementation strategies have been shown to boost clinical effectiveness ( Glisson et al., 2010 ), reduce staff turnover ( Aarons, Sommerfield, Hect, Silvosky, & Chaffin, 2009 ) and help reduce disparities in care ( Balicer et al., 2015 ).

Future directions: Research on implementation strategies

My work in implementation science has helped build intellectual capital for the rapidly growing field of dissemination and implementation science, leading teams to distinguish, clearly define, develop taxonomies, and stimulate more systematic work to advance the conceptual, linguistic, and methodological clarity in the field. Yet, we continue to lack understanding of many issues. What strategies are used in usual implementation practice, by whom, for which empirically supported interventions? What strategies are effective in which organizational and policy contexts? Which strategies are effective in attaining which specific implementation outcomes? For example, are the strategies that are effective for initial adoption also effective for scale up, spread, and sustained use of interventions? Social workers have the skill set for roles as implementation facilitators, and refining packages of implementation strategies that are effective in social service and behavioral health settings could boost the visibility, scale, and impact of our work.

The Third Generation and Counting

Social work faces grand, often daunting challenges. We need to develop a more robust base of evidence about the effectiveness of interventions and make that evidence more relevant, accessible, and applicable to social work practitioners, whether they work in communities, agencies, policy arenas, or a host of novel settings. We need to advance measurement-based care so our value as a field is recognized. We need to know how to bring proven interventions to scale for population-level impact. We need to discover ways to build capacity of social service agencies and the communities in which they reside. And we need to learn how to sustain advances in care once we achieve them ( Proctor et al., 2015 ). Our challenges are indeed grand, far outstripping our resources.

So how dare we speak of a quality quest? Does it not seem audacious to seek the highest standards in caring for the most vulnerable, especially in an era when we face a new political climate that threatens vulnerable groups and promises to strip resources from health and social services? Members of our profession are underpaid, and most of our agencies lack the data infrastructure required for assessment and evaluation. Quality may be an audacious goal, but as social workers we can pursue no less. By virtue of our code of ethics, our commitment to equity, and our skills in intervening on multiple levels of systems and communities, social workers are ideally suited for advancing quality.

Who will conduct the needed research? Who will pioneer its translation to improving practice? Social work practice can be only as strong as its research base; the responsibility for developing that base, and hence improve practice, is lodged within social work research.

If my greatest challenge is pursuing this quest, my greatest joy is in mentoring the next generation for this work. My research mentoring has always been guided by the view that the ultimate purpose of research in the helping professions is the production and systemization of knowledge for use by practitioners ( Rosen & Proctor, 1978 ). For 27 years, the National Institute of Mental Health has supported training in mental health services research based in the Center for Mental Health Services Research ( Hasche, Perron, & Proctor, 2009 ; Proctor & McMillen, 2008 ). And, with colleague John Landsverk, we are launching my sixth year leading the Implementation Research Institute, a training program for implementation science supported by the National Institute of Mental Health ( Proctor et al., 2013 ). We have trained more than 50 social work, psychology, anthropology, and physician researchers in implementation science for mental health. With three more cohorts to go, we are working to assess what works in research training for implementation science. Using bibliometric analysis, we have learned that intensive training and mentoring increases research productivity in the form of published papers and grants that address how to implement evidence-based care in mental health and addictions. And, through use of social network analysis, we have learned that every “dose” of mentoring increases scholarly collaboration when measured two years later ( Luke, Baumann, Carothers, Landsverk, & Proctor, 2016 ).

As his student, I was privileged to learn lessons in mentoring from Aaron Rosen. He treated his students as colleagues, he invited them in to work on the most challenging of questions, and he pursued his work with joy. When he treated me as a colleague, I felt empowered. When he invited me to work with him on the field’s most vexing challenges, I felt inspired. And as he worked with joy, I learned that work pursued with joy doesn’t feel like work at all. And now the third, fourth, and fifth generations of social work researchers are pursuing tough challenges and the quality quest for social work practice. May seasoned and junior researchers work collegially and with joy, tackling the profession’s toughest research challenges, including the quest for high-quality social work services.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this paper was supported by IRI (5R25MH0809160), Washington University ICTS (2UL1 TR000448-08), Center for Mental Health Services Research, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Center for Dissemination and Implementation, Institute for Public Health, Washington University in St. Louis.

This invited article is based on the 2017 Aaron Rosen Lecture presented by Enola Proctor at the Society for Social Work and Research 21st Annual Conference—“Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth”—held January 11–15, 2017, in New Orleans, LA. The annual Aaron Rosen Lecture features distinguished scholars who have accumulated a body of significant and innovative scholarship relevant to practice, the research base for practice, or effective utilization of research in practice.

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An Overview of Social Psychology

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Adah Chung is a fact checker, writer, researcher, and occupational therapist.

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What Is Social Psychology?

History of social psychology.

Social Psychology and Other Disciplines

Social psychology is the study of the interplay between an individual and social groups. Social psychologists tackle issues that significantly affect people's health and well-being, such as bullying.

According to psychologist Gordon Allport , social psychology uses scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thoughts , feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of other human beings." Essentially, social psychology is about understanding how each person's individual behavior is influenced by the social environment in which that behavior takes place.

You probably already realize that other people can have a dramatic influence on the way you act and the choices you make. Consider how you might behave in a situation if you were all alone versus if there were other people in the room.

The decisions you make and the behaviors you exhibit might depend on not only how many people are present but exactly who you are around. For example, you are likely to behave much differently when you are around a group of close friends than you would around a group of colleagues or supervisors from work.

Social psychology encompasses a wide range of social topics, including:

Group behavior
Social perception
Nonverbal behavior

It is important to note that social psychology is not just about looking at social influences. Social perception and social interaction are also vital to understanding social behavior.

The way that we see other people (and the way we think they see us) can play a powerful role in a wide variety of actions and decisions. Just think for a moment about how you sometimes act differently in a public setting than you might if you were at home by yourself. At home, you might be loud and rambunctious, while in public you might be much more subdued and reserved.

Why is this? Because the people around us shape our thoughts, feelings, moods, attitudes, and perceptions. The presence of other people can make a difference in the choices we make and the actions we take.

While social psychology tends to be an academic field, the research that social psychologists perform has a powerful influence on our understanding of mental health and well-being. For example, research on conformity helps explain why teenagers sometimes go to such great lengths to fit in with their social group—sometimes to the detriment of their own health and wellness.

Understanding this helps psychologists develop public health programs and treatment approaches for adolescents. These can help teenagers resist potentially harmful behaviors such as smoking, drinking, and substance use.

Plato referred to the idea of the "crowd mind," and concepts such as social loafing and social facilitation were introduced in the late 1800s. But it wasn't until after World War II that research on social psychology began in earnest.

The horrors of the Holocaust led researchers to study social influence, conformity , and obedience. What could explain why people participated in such evil actions? Were people following orders and bowing to social pressure, or were there some other forces at work? By investigating these questions, social psychologists were able to gain a greater understanding of the power of societal forces such as authority, compliance , and obedience.

Social psychologist Stanley Milgram, for example, was able to demonstrate just how far people are willing to go to obey authority figures. In a series of now infamous experiments , Milgram and his colleagues ordered study participants to deliver what they believed was a potentially dangerous shock to another person.

In reality, the shocks were not real and the other individual was only pretending to be hurt by the electrical pulses. But 65% of those who took part in the study delivered the maximum level of shock simply because an authority figure told them to do so.

Social psychology has continued to grow throughout the twentieth century, inspiring research that has contributed to our understanding of social experience and behavior. Our social world makes up such a tremendous part of our lives, so it is no wonder that this topic is so fascinating to many.

How Social Psychology Differs From Other Disciplines

Social psychology is often confused with folk wisdom, personality psychology , and sociology. Unlike folk wisdom, which relies on anecdotal observations and subjective interpretation, social psychology employs scientific methods and empirical study. Researchers do not make assumptions about how people behave; they devise and carry out experiments that help point out relationships between different variables.

Personality psychology focuses on individual traits, characteristics, and thoughts. Social psychology is focused on situations. Social psychologists are interested in the impact that the social environment and group interactions have on attitudes and behaviors.

Finally, it is important to distinguish between social psychology and sociology. While there are many similarities between the two, sociology tends to look at social behavior and influences at a very broad-based level. Sociologists are interested in the institutions and cultures that influence how people behave.

Psychologists instead focus on situational variables that affect social behavior. While psychology and sociology both study similar topics, they are looking at these questions from different perspectives.

A Word From Verywell

What makes social psychology such an important topic? Social psychologists focus on societal concerns that have a powerful influence on individual well-being as well as the health of society as a whole, including problems such as substance use, crime, prejudice, domestic abuse, public health, bullying, and aggression.

Social psychologists typically do not work directly in the field of mental health, but the results of their research influence how mental health professionals treat behaviors that are influenced by social factors. Public health programs, for example, often rely on persuasion techniques identified by social psychologists to encourage people to engage in healthy behaviors while avoiding potentially dangerous ones.

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Milgram S. Behavioral study of obedience . J Abnorm Psychol . 1963;67(4):371-378. doi:10.1037/h0040525.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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What is social psychology and why is it important?

12 Sep 2022

How you'll learn

Social psychology is an important area of study

Humans are inherently social creatures..

Find out the main areas of social psychology and how its used by psychologists.

With increasing challenges and pressures facing today’s society globally, as well as greater mental health awareness over recent years, psychology as a chosen study area and profession has seen a rapid increase in popularity.

Connection with others is an important part of being human. And, as such, social psychology is an important part of psychology and understanding people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviours.

We explore social psychology in some more detail here.

Definition of social psychology

Social psychology is the study of how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the actual, or imagined, presence of people around them.

It’s about understanding how an individual’s behaviour can be shaped by the social environment in which that behaviour takes place.

Humans are inherently social creatures – although we may enjoy some alone time, we essentially look to maintain connections with others. This means the social aspect of our lives is an important one.

In social situations, our behaviours may differ greatly from those we would exhibit if we were alone. Some examples of these situations include:

Work situations where managers and colleagues are present

Large family get-togethers

Catch-ups with close friends

Think of how you might behave differently in each of these social situations. Social psychology is about delving deeper into these differences.

What are the main areas of social psychology?

Social psychology covers a range of topic areas, including:

Social perception and interaction

Group behaviour

Non-verbal behaviour

These areas are all important in understanding the factors that influence and determine an individual’s behaviour in various social situations.

Why is social psychology important? How is it used by psychologists?

Social psychology is important because humans are social by nature – it’s virtually impossible to completely remove the social aspects of our lives altogether. Although some people may be more ‘social’ than others, we inevitably find ourselves in multiple and various social situations throughout our lives.

Since we’re often placed in social environments, we also often adapt our behaviours according to each of those environments. If we want to understand an individual’s behaviour, we therefore need to examine their social environments as a key element.

The way we see others, and the way we think they see us, can have a big impact on our thoughts, feelings, behaviours and decisions. So, it’s important to understand how these factors can influence us as individuals and as groups.

Psychologists use social psychology to gain a deeper understanding of these factors and influences, and work to identify and raise awareness of how these can impact an individual’s mental health and wellbeing.

They can also work to develop programmes that aim to address these – for example, being involved in public health programmes that can help teenagers resist peer pressure to engage in potentially harmful behaviours, such as smoking and substance abuse.

What will you learn about social psychology with an MSc Psychology?

It might be obvious that our behaviours as humans change according to our social environments, and that being around others can have an impact on our thoughts, feelings, and behaviours, but how and why this is the case requires in-depth research and analysis.

With an MSc Psychology , you’ll explore the important theories around this, as well as changes in these theoretical approaches over the years. You’ll also gain an understanding of the concepts and values that shaped the methodologies and discussions around social psychology – from its initial inception as a field of psychology to the present day.

If you’re looking to transition into a rewarding career in psychology, The University of Portsmouth offers a part-time online MSc Psychology that will empower you with the knowledge and skills you need to drive change and make a positive difference in people’s lives:

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The Many Benefits of Studying Psychology

How and why an understanding of psychology can be essential for anyone..

Posted May 18, 2024 | Reviewed by Ray Parker

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Understanding the scientific method helps to make more informed decisions.
Studying psychology helps better understand relationships in the home and at work.
Contrary to popular belief, psychology can be a very employable college degree.

Even though psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors, many people question the benefits of a psychology degree. This is partially due to the fact that a career in the field of psychology typically requires a graduate degree. Yet, I am going to argue that there are many benefits to studying psychology that are beyond simply finding a rewarding career. Here are several:

A Good Understanding of the Scientific Method

Psychology provides a good grounding in the scientific method. Being a social science, psychology teaches us that rather than operating on our hunches or our own biased experiences, it is important to look for objective evidence to gain a better understanding. Psychology students learn that science strives to make informed decisions but also acknowledges that science is not “black and white” thinking. The scientific method relies on the ”best possible evidence,” meaning that as new evidence is gathered, conclusions may change.

We saw this at play during the COVID-19 pandemic and vaccine skepticism. Rather than relying on the best possible evidence of the vaccine’s effectiveness in preventing serious illness and death, skeptics relied more on biased information from uninformed sources or from their own observed (non-scientific) experiences.

Critical Thinking

A great deal of psychological content, and the methods taught and used by psychologists, focus on how to think critically. Critical thinking is considered to be essential to being an educated person. These critical thinking skills can benefit a variety of careers in business, law, and other professions.

Understanding of Relationships and Psychological Well-Being

Although studying psychology doesn’t necessarily make you psychologically healthier any more than studying medicine makes you physically healthy, psychology majors do have this knowledge at their fingertips and should be more aware of the fact that good interpersonal and family relationships require attention and hard work. Psychology also tells us that when we are having difficulties in relationships or in coping with life, it is important to seek out professional help and counseling.

A Better Understanding of Workplace Dynamics

Studying psychology, particularly the area of industrial/organizational psychology provides insights into the world of work. Knowledge of psychology can lead to improved work relationships, and it can benefit professionally, as well. A knowledge of human behavior is one of the "selling points" for psych majors when it comes to gaining employment, and a knowledge of basic psychology makes you a more effective supervisor/manager

Improved Employability

Contrary to popular belief, psychology is a very good general major for careers in law, social services, education , business, and many other occupations. The trick is knowing how to “sell” your psychology degree and background to a potential employer (the employer may hold to stereotypes that psychology is an "empty" major without real skills). However, savvy employers (and savvy job applicants) know that an understanding of human behavior is essential to success in the workplace.

Ronald E. Riggio, Ph.D. , is the Henry R. Kravis Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology at Claremont McKenna College.

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According to psychologist Gordon Allport, social psychology uses scientific methods "to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied the presence of other human beings." Essentially, social psychology is about understanding how each person's individual behavior ...
(PDF) Child and Adolescent Psychology for Social Work and Allied
Gabriela Misca. Applied P erspectives. for Social W ork and. Allied Professions: Psychology. 90101. 9 780230 368439. Social workers, p sychologists and othe r professional s who work with children ...
Social Psychology Examines Interpersonal Relationships
Social psychologists are interested in all aspects of interpersonal relationships and the ways that psychology can improve those interactions. For example, their research helps us understand how people form attitudes toward others and, when these are harmful — as in the case of prejudice, for example — provides insight into ways to change them.
Psychology for Social Work Practice
Psychology for Social Work Practice. Child development is the process of human growth and changes from birth through adolescence (Smith et al 2005). It is the study of how children develop perception, thought processes, emotional reactions and patterns of social behaviour (Mussein, 1990). Observation is a vital tool in analysing and ...
What is social psychology and why is it important?
Social psychology is the study of how people's thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the actual, or imagined, presence of people around them. It's about understanding how an individual's behaviour can be shaped by the social environment in which that behaviour takes place. Humans are inherently social creatures - although ...
PDF A Brief Guide to Writing the Psychology Paper
Psychology writing, like writing in the other sciences, is meant to inform the reader about a new idea, theory or experiment. Toward this end, academic psychologists emphasize the importance of clarity and brevity in writing while minimizing descriptive language and complex sentence structure. The best writers of psychology have
Social work and sociology/sociology and social work: Peering back and
While the focus is on social work and sociology, similar questions arise when we think of the relationship of sociology and (e.g.) social policy, law or education.Morris (2019), for example, counters the argument that sociology and social policy are distinct disciplines that rest on different kinds of knowledge.She suggests that the theoretical and the practical do not divide sociology and ...
PDF Sociology for social work
occur. Social work is also concerned with improving society, both for the community as a whole and for individuals who, for whatever reason, have not done so well in life. Both also share an interest in social inequalities: sociology in ascertaining the extent and causes of inequalities, and social work in dealing with the social effects of ...
The Many Benefits of Studying Psychology
A Better Understanding of Workplace Dynamics. Studying psychology, particularly the area of industrial/organizational psychology provides insights into the world of work. Knowledge of psychology ...
Importance Of Psychology In Social Work
Psychology is defined as the scientific study of behavior and mental process in humans and animals. A social worker is a person that works with people and families to support them through difficult times and ensure that vulnerable people, including children and adults are safeguarded from harm. Their role is to provide support and help to ...