Is Research Utilization for Social Workers?

Analysis of articles in Social Work and four journals of other fields suggests that social work lacks a strong research tradition. Most authors cited in Social Work articles are not social workers. Social Work ranks last among the journals in the proportion of articles that report research. Possible causes of the profession's weak research orientation include frequent shifts of intellectual emphasis, stronger orientations to people than to ideas, careers not requiring attention to research, and restrictive agency policies. Research utilization might increase if the profession concentrated on developing an indigenous research tradition and relied less on outsiders for its knowledge.