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Gunnar Dybwad, Supervisor, Children's Division State Department of Social Welfare, Lansing, Michigan

-*Paper given at the National Conference of Social Work, Cleveland, June 15, 1949.-

As I sat at my desk the other day musing the familiar problem as to how to phrase the introductory sentences to this paper, my glance fell on the posters of the National Mental Health Foundation which adorn my office walls. The one stated: "Some people still believe that mental illness is a disgrace..." Then it said in bold letters; "BUT SCIENCE TEACHES mental illness is no disgrace. Like physical ills it requires prompt medical care." The other poster said; "Some people still believe that mental illness comes suddenly..." And then again in bold letters: "BUT SCIENCE TEACHES mental illness develops gradually and shows warning signs in advance."

What strength there lies in the words "BUT SCIENCE TEACHES" and how little of this strength is available to us at the moment as we pursue our respective responsibilities in the field of child welfare.

Some people still believe that infants, deprived through death of their parents' care, are best provided for by spending their entire childhood, up until they graduate from high school, in orphans' homes. WE know that is wrong, but can we say SCIENCE TEACHES that orphanages of this type are harmful?

Some people still believe that the kindest and most effective way to help children who are found in neglectful home situations is to remove them from their families and let them grow up in different surroundings. WE know that such broad statement is wrong, that the separation of a child from its family may often be more harmful than the neglect; and WE know that we have learned to deal with the underlying factors of such child neglect, helping parents to take better care of their children, but could we use the proud and strong words "BUT SCIENCE TEACHES"?

Last year Benjamin Youngdahl, in his presidential address to the American Association of Schools of Social Work at St. Paul, made the following comments in a broad, critical analysis of the problems of the social work profession which he entitled "Shall We Face It?": "One of our weaknesses in social work is our public relation... At least one important factor in this handicap is our difficulty in giving objective proof of the validity of the things that we do... -While- we have hope, faith and charity in abundance, and we wouldn't subtract from it even a fraction of a degree, by the application of intelligence through research methods to human relations and human problems, we shall be able to gain knowledge, enlarge our sphere of influence and be of greater service." And a few months later Philip Klein threw out this challenge to last year's National Conference of Social Work, speaking at the first meeting of the newly-formed Committee on Research in Social Work, "Too much of our evaluation of behavior difficulties is still in the realm of individual speculation, and scientific research is needed to produce statements of general validity."

If we then pose as our first question in this morning's discussion: Why do we need research? the simplest answer might be: To explain and evaluate what we have done in the past, to be able to defend or even understand what we are doing now and to plot the guideposts of future planful action.

As we members of the Child Welfare League gather here together at our first meeting devoted to the problems of research in child welfare, we hardly can be proud of our progressiveness. To the contrary, we will have to run hard and long to catch up with business and industry and agriculture, who long since have recognized that it is to their own advantage to submit their present procedures and their future plans to the objective and penetrating scrutiny of the research worker.

In its plea for national legislation to facilitate research in child life the American Parents Committee points out that in 1947 the army and navy together spent 500 million dollars for research, and the Department of Agriculture spent 13 million, of which no less than 1 million 300 thousand dollars' worth of research was spent on cows as contrasted with the magnificent sum of 50 thousand dollars available to the Children's Bureau for research (l/26th the amount spent for research on cows).

Some of you may want to rationalize this by saying that we hardly can do the research in child welfare unless we first get the money for it, but it ill behooves us to wait for the public to do our planning. Agriculture is willing to spend millions on the testing of cows and sows because it has in years past been presented with research projects which provided in understandable fashion a practical answer to specific acute problems.

Two years ago Arlien Johnson in her presidential address to this conference which she entitled "Science and Social Work", contended that since man's inherited human nature has changed little in thousands of years, common human needs persist and that the biologists, psychologists, and anthropologists have produced a wealth of facts that document this statement. Yet, also, the one book which during the past two years has been attacked most viciously by the critics of the programs of Aid to Dependent Children in many states has been a publication of the Federal Security Agency entitled "Common Human Needs". Could the trouble be that this excellent volume contains our viewpoints, however well founded, rather than "What science teaches"? And to what extent can we point to "what science teaches" when it comes to the placement of handicapped children for adoption, the separation of the child born out of wedlock from his mother, or the group care of infants under three months preliminary to adoptive placements. We know that a worker who carries 35 cases can see his clients more often and write more pages of recording than a worker with a case load of 50 or 60, but is it not time that we determined through scientific procedures the results encountered by either one of these two workers and the factors on which these results are based?

If I, thus, may submit for the purpose of our discussion today that indeed we do need research, the second question immediately develops: "Who should do the research?" In defense of many people who have in the past given thoughtful service to social work in leadership positions, it should be pointed out here that their failure to press for social work research was not due just to negligence or pre-occupation with their particular realms of function but, rather, was due to their conviction that their profession merely had the task of transforming into action, for the sake of community welfare, the findings developed by the social and biological sciences. Only recently this viewpoint that social workers are practitioners and not researchers was brought up once more at a meeting of a national committee of experts in the field of child life.

I want to submit here that we either must relinquish the claim of constituting as social workers a professional group, or else we must acknowledge that one of the basic criteria of a profession is its use of scientific analysis in constant self-evaluation. This is not meant to be a declaration of our independence from the research activities of other groups, rather, we must ever develop what Philip Klein calls our partnership with the social and biological sciences. We must freely acknowledge the basic support we have acquired by utilizing the findings of other sciences, but with it we must also emphasize our own competence to apply the scientific approach to problems of human relationships.

There will undoubtedly be some who, while acknowledging the general responsibility of the field of social work to do its own research, will, nevertheless, point out that they hardly would be in a position to participate in this endeavor as the very specialization and smallness of their agency would not make it possible to conduct large-scale inquiries which, after all, would be a criterion for research. That this is a wrong premise was quite clearly developed by Robert C. Angell, the distinguished sociologist, in a symposium on research at the 1942 meeting of the American Orthopsychiatric Association. Dr. Angell pointed out that the number of new cases which are necessary to the verification of an hypothesis varies with its character and that a simple generalization in a complex field, such as an hypothesis that broken homes produce delinquent children, obviously has to be submitted to a large number of tests, whereas, if a complex hypothesis is put forward to cover a not-too-complex situation, it may be verified by a relatively small number of cases. Applied to our situation in the child welfare field, does this not mean that there is indeed a place for the small children's agency specializing in the placement of children with difficult behavior problems, to make a substantial contribution to social work research through a careful analysis of the factors operative in the agency function if only this inquiry is conducted in keeping with the principles of scientific research.

But who in our agencies should do the research? Is it not true that we must turn to other professions to carry out our research because our own casework staff shows lack of interest, if not outright aversion toward research activities?

I think the answer to this is given emphatically by David French in his editorial foreword to the American Association of Social Workers' newest pamphlet "The Contribution of Research to Social Work" when he says, "We confront a need for clear recognition that research is a specialization in social work -- a specialization centered around skills, process and knowledge of research methods as applied to the areas of social work practice."

If we accept this dictum of Mr. French, then we must raise our next question of our discussion "How do we train social workers for research?" The interim reports of the Study of Social Work Education which is being undertaken at the present time indicate that this study will indeed arrive at the conclusion that our schools of social work should develop courses which will provide training for specialized research work as the concern of all aspects of social work just as it does now provide for a specialization in medical or psychiatric social work. However, our problem will not be solved by asking our schools of social work to turn out each year a (hopefully) adequate number of specialists in social research. Once more we must say that, if we are to be considered a profession, then every member of the social work profession must be prepared to understand, accept and apply scientific methods of analysis. This is how Dr. Youngdahl last year put this problem squarely before the schools of social work; "A graduate degree in social work should mean...that the individual knows enough about the scientific method in research to be able to recognize errors or validity in conclusions and to suggest study projects which may be helpful in the functioning of his agency or his work."

What type of research then is needed in social work? Philip Klein suggests the following five categories:

1. Studies to establish, identify and measure the need for service.

2. Studies to measure the services offered as they relate to needs. (Both these types of studies would clearly have an orientation towards planning of services and planning of agency structure. With these we might include also administrative studies and cost studies.)

3. Studies to test, gauge, and evaluate results of social work operation.

4. Studies to test the efficacy of special techniques, be it casework procedures of one school versus those of another, probation versus institutional care, child guidance by teamwork versus guidance by casework or psychiatrist, group therapy versus individual therapy, etc. (In this Dr. Klein includes differences in organizational patterns, merger of agencies or multiple function within a casework agency, intake, etc.)

5. Studies and methodology of research.

In order to gain some measure of objective data for presentation to you here today, a request was made to the Clearing House for Research in Child Life, recently organized within the United States Children's Bureau for a list of the projects registered last year with the Clearing House within the broad field of child care.

Time does not permit here to give a detailed analysis of the 69 reports of projects which ware made available to me by the Clearing House. Neither would such a detailed analysis be particularly valuable because the Clearing House is keenly aware that it has at the present time only a very incomplete and spotty list of such projects since it is merely in the beginning stage of collecting this information.

However, it would seem appropriate to check the types of projects submitted to the clearing house with the just-mentioned types developed by Dr. Klein, and such comparison has the following results:

The largest number of the 69 reported research projects fell in the first two categories, that is, they were either studies on child welfare needs or studies to measure the adequacy of service as related to needs. Most of then did not go beyond a general survey and seemed to have but little significance outside of the particular community in which the study was made. There were a good number of administrative studies testing in general the adequacy of the service of a particular agency. It is significant that there was only one cost study, and this was a nation-wide study undertaken by the United States Children's Bureau with regard to its own program of child welfare services.

There was but one study which corresponded to the third type developed by Dr. Klein, namely, a study to test and evaluate results of social work operation. This study was also the only one in the group of 69 which dealt directly with preventive child welfare services. It was a project by a public agency.

There was, of course, a large number of projects falling into the fourth type -- studios to test the efficacy of specific techniques. A large number of these dealt with problems of adoption and the second largest number with child placement in general while other studies related particularly to the field of child guidance and the final group dealt with institutional adjustment. Most of these studies were extremely limited in nature so that one might well question whether the term "research" could be applied to them. Quite a few of them violated the caution of Dr. Angell; namely, they attempted to test a simple hypothesis in a complex field with too small a number of cases, thereby leaving unanswered the suggestion that similar results might have been achieved perhaps by simply relying on the healing factor of time itself and on the adaptability of the average human being in adjusting to a difficult social situation.

There was not a single project which would fall in Dr. Klein's fifth category, "Studies in methodology of research."

Recognizing once more that we are dealing here with a group of projects which cannot be taken as a representative sample of research activity in child welfare throughout the country, it might, nonetheless, be advantageous to add to our analysis of this group of studies some suggestions for future work in this area.

It has been said so often that it hardly bears repeating and yet must be stated here once more that, before we can proceed farther in social work research, we will need to agree on a definite terminology. As it is, much time and money-consuming effort is lost because the findings of one study are not transferable to another because the two do not employ the same terminology. I think we must clearly differentiate between the danger that we all might be made to think alike and the necessity that we all should be able to express our thinking in terms which are understandable to the rest of the group. The least we should be able to find out is wherein and to what extent we are in disagreement.

There certainly is a crying need for cost studies. When a private agency, who, by the way, is affiliated with the Child Welfare League of America, has with a complement of three presumably professional workers a combined average case load of 46 for a year's period, then we indeed can understand the outsider's repeated question, "What price social work?"

It hardly need be stressed, though, that we must not view cost studies too narrowly merely as an accounting of time spent and value received. We cannot be satisfied to learn that a particular agency is keeping all its workers fully occupied doing an adequate job with the type of case the agency has customarily handled. To me, it is extremely significant that in my state a small agency which has always excelled in the quality of service it gives to the community is, nevertheless, the one which has asked loudest and most persistently "Are we doing the most we can do for our community with the means at our command?" Their board members are not merely satisfied in doing a good job with the needs they recognized in yesteryears; they are keenly aware that the endowments they hold are a public trust which puts them under obligation to offer their uttermost to meet the needs of today, and to this end they are willing to adjust their program to changing times.

What would happen if such soul-searching scrutinizing would be undertaken by child welfare agencies across the country? How many buildings dedicated to the memory of worthy citizens, long since dead, would have to be vacated? How many deserving staff members with long and faithful service would have to be faced with the reality that they no longer possess adequate skills to deal with the problems of the day? How many agencies would have to accept the grim knowledge that they are representing themselves in their community as giving service which a staff three times the size that they now possess would no longer be able to fulfill adequately.

When we next consider projects in measuring the effectiveness of specific techniques we face a situation which is very similar to the difficulty in measuring needs or services: once again the practitioners in our child welfare agencies are not agreeing on the definitions of their various techniques; and, so, each project forms an isolated unity often clearly understandable only to one who is thoroughly acquainted with that particular agency's policies and practices. Furthermore, to study results in social adjustments, one most of necessity undertake long-range research projects, long-range at least in terms of follow-up, not just one or two years after the case was closed by the agency but five, ten years and more.

Perhaps the answer to many of these implied and direct questions I have raised in this paper are found if we could comply with Dr. Klein's demands for studies in the methodology of research.

How can we adequately measure service to unmarried mothers and their children? How do we determine success and failure in an institutional program which so definitely involves the child's physical, intellectual, social and emotional growth. What criteria have we developed to compare one group of children with those of another agency, if we wish to review their respective progress?

It seems to me that I should call to your attention here two notable ventures which both seem to have taken a courageous and rather effective step forward towards clarification of these problems, no matter how limited their application may be at the moment. The one is the plan for definite treatment categories first developed at the New York State Training School for Boys at Warwick and amply reported in professional literature by H. D. Williams and by R. L. Jenkins. The other is the work at the Michigan Child Guidance Institute (and later continued in Illinois) aimed at the development (through statistical analysis of case records) of "Fundamental Patterns of Maladjustment" and the dynamics of their origin. It is significant that this research by R. L. Jenkins and Lostor Hewitt, termed by non less than the late James S. Plant, "a careful conservative piece of work of inestimable value" has not been followed up by similar studies in related areas. Might this be explained by the very fact that its value lies in a unique combination of psychiatric considerations and statistical computations?

The mere mention of such very considerable research undertakings inevitably raises the question: "How can we facilitate such research in our child welfare agencies?" If we agree that social agencies must move from the ivory tower of contemplative complacency to the firing line of effective productivity then it becomes obvious that the smallest, most specialized agencies must be as much committed to do their share in research activities as the large-scale public agency serving a mass clientele with a minimum budget, a Council of Social Agencies, or indeed a school of social work.

It should be clear that responsibility to initiate and sponsor research in child welfare agencies, public or private, must rest with governing boards and hence it is particularly appropriate here to repeat what a board member had to say on this subject at a Child Welfare League meeting during last year's conference in Atlantic City. In an address "A Board Member Speaks on Our Responsibility for Research" Mr. James Brown commented: "There are a few children's agencies which have made a beginning in research, but most of us have resorted to research only in emergencies. We wait until we get seriously snarled up or become uncomfortable under criticism from the community, and then cry loudly for our good friends at the Child Welfare League or our local Council of Social Agencies to come to our immediate rescue with a 'study'...

"I do not believe that research can any longer be considered a luxury, and I am sure that if we are going to discharge our trusteeship effectively, we must begin to give a more important place to it right now."

For the very reason that it has become so common these days to heap abuse on governmental agencies and their supposed inefficiency, it should be stressed here that altogether the public welfare agencies have shown a greater willingness to show in facts and figures what they are doing and where they plan on going and not a few have ventured beyond into the realm of analytical research.

No agency, public or private, has equalled the distinguished record of the United States Children's Bureau, whose untold number of studies have given it world-wide leadership in the field of child care and protection.

A first obligation of any board then is to make available for research purposes an amount of money which is commensurate with the size of the agency's operation, regardless whether this involves tax money, community chest support or endowment. Next the board will have to make sure that they have on the staff workers who have the skill and the time required for research work, and an executive who has at least the ability to recognize the agency's tasks in research and the willingness to facilitate them.

A further obligation incumbent on the board pertains to the absolute necessity that research activities not be interfered with by dictates of convenience or, worse yet, defensiveness. If the agency cannot afford a qualified research supervisor of its own (and few will be able to do so), then the board must get outside consultation to ascertain that the methods and procedures of the particular project were sound and the conclusions warranted by the findings. To "doctor up" a research report is about as silly and futile as to alter an X-ray report.

Finally, the board, with and through its research workers, must join in cooperative research planning not only with other agencies, but also with representatives from the social and biological sciences.

In view of the dire necessity to make an emphasis on research the order of the day, some boards of smaller agencies who are anyhow faced with readjustment of their functions in the community might consider making research their primary activity, much as we have such centers developed by the medical and psychological professions. In this connection we should take another look at the suggestion of Herta Kraus in her article "The Future of Social Work" (1) that some voluntary agencies consider abandoning their isolated service units in favor of a new partnership with the public agency, which would take the form of a research unit (or other consultant service) within the public agency, but staffed and operated by the voluntary agency. This proposal is surely no panacea but merely one of many ways of combining the efforts of public and private welfare work.

As we come to the close of this short and necessarily sketchy summary a final question presents itself: "How shall the finished research product be utilized?"

Aside from the rather obvious application of the study's conclusions as far as the immediate agency is concerned, effective planning from a broader viewpoint makes it imperative that the research findings as well as conclusions, be shared by others. Once more the problem of semantics arises: The joy of professionalism accentuating petty differences in terminology versus plain, common, but effective English. In order to be available the research project must be suitably multigraphed or printed, and an effort made to let it reach those who would have an obvious professional concern. And finally; it must become known, must be carried in reference lists, and be indexed.

It is for this purpose that there was organized last year in the Children's Bureau the Clearinghouse for Research in Child Life under the directorship of the chairman of today's meeting, Dr. Clara E. Councell. The Clearinghouse proposes to collect from and distribute to research workers information about current studies in the various fields affecting child life.

It stands to reason that the success of this undertaking will rest squarely on the degree of cooperation from agencies who have produced research. If the Clearinghouse becomes a successful venture we can systematize our research efforts and plot a chart of accomplishments and of needs yet to be met.

Be not mistaken: research in child life goes on in our country full blast every day, at a cost of thousands of dollars. Only it is the manufacturer of baby clothes, of teenagers' jeans and fingertip coats, of bubble gum and soda pop who are the sponsors. Let us resolve here, and now, that in the best spirit of competitive enterprise we shall run counter to this overemphasis on shallow materialism and gain support for our research which should forever be aimed at preserving and strengthening those true values on which rests the happiness of our children.