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From January 2001 NASW NEWS Network Reports Membership Data
Results show who social workers are and how they do their jobs. By John V. O'Neill, MSW, NEWS Staff The first survey results from NASW's Practice Research Network (PRN) provide a wealth of useful information about the association's members — including incomes, types of clients, practice settings and prevalence of substance-abusing clients. The survey, funded by a $250,000 grant from the Center for Substance Abuse (CSAT) and delivered in October, contains more information than NASW has collected in the past about its membership and how they practice social work. It is based on a random survey of 2,000 regular association members (excluding student, transitional and retired members) with an 81 percent return rate, making it highly characteristic of NASW's 100,742 regular domestic members. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.4 percent, at the 95th confidence interval. NASW managers see great potential for social work practice research networks in which practitioners provide information about their practice and clients that can be used to inform and improve practice, track trends in the profession and inform policy. PRNs can be useful in demonstrating best practices and outcomes, an area where social work has lagged behind some other disciplines. NASW sees the CSAT-funded feasibility study and initial survey as learning experiences and a starting point for the profession to establish other PRNs and develop a broader research agenda, said Toby Weismiller, NASW's interim executive director. Funding sources could include additional grants from CSAT, already under consideration, and other federal agencies and foundation grants. "We could do a practice research network in any field of practice: aging, child welfare, adolescence — any population, any diagnosis," said Weismiller. "There are endless ways to ask, 'What is happening in treatment?'" "We hope to build a program that will collect, analyze and disseminate information," she said. "First we will understand the nature of practice, then inform and improve practice." Practice research networks in social work will be based on experiences in the health care community, sometimes called patient registries, where for years such networks have provided data to formulate best practices on health conditions. These have included conditions with compliance or behavioral health aspects, like coronary disease, weight control and diabetes, and more practitioner-oriented topics like primary care and practice studies. In the behavioral health care area, psychiatrists have developed a PRN over the past seven years that has developed large-scale, clinically detailed, nationally generalizable data to inform a broad range of clinical and policy issues that could not be studied any other way. The psychiatric association has established a special unit of about 10 people to do nothing but develop a strategic research agenda, acquire funding, perform research projects and distribute findings — the sort of effort that could become possible for social work, said Weismiller. CSAT's interest in funding research among other mental health professionals, especially social workers, is obvious when the numbers of practitioners are considered. A CSAT feasibility study on PRNs says there are about 400,000 mental health professionals in five mental health disciplines: 173,000 social workers; 61,000 counselors; 53,000 psychologists; 44,000 marriage and family therapists; and 34,000 psychiatrists. Of these, between 120,000 and 153,000 provide care in independent practice settings, typically seeing 25 to 30 clients per week. "However, little is known about the numbers and proportions of clients with substance abuse issues as a primary or secondary diagnosis who are treated by these practitioners, or the types of treatment administered, let alone the business and referral practices of a group of caregivers who may assume increasing importance in the years to come," said the CSAT study. CSAT has provided technical and financial assistance to five other associations for establishment and initial implementation of PRNs: American Counseling Association, National Association of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse Counselors, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, American Psychological Association and American Psychiatric Association. NASW's survey was mailed to randomly selected members in April 2000, and data were analyzed by Readex Mail Survey Research. Research procedures were designed to protect confidentiality of social workers and clients. All data were analyzed at an aggregate level. The high response rate and swift analysis of data bode well for additional funding from CSAT and foundations, said Weismiller. Other important topics for additional research in follow-up surveys, according to a draft technical paper by NASW's PRN working group, include:
While initial PRN surveys will fill gaps in knowledge about identification, treatment and referral of substance-abusing clients in private practice and agency settings, NASW managers hope subsequent initiatives will capture information on other critical social work service and policy issues. "The field of practice that is most common is mental health," said Weismiller. "Logically, we need to explore sources of funding in that area, followed by children and families." "This is a fabulous opportunity for NASW and the profession," said Barbara Shank, who chairs the NASW working group. "This kind of work has not been done relative to practice with various target populations. It is an opportunity to say, 'This is what we do and why our services are valuable.'" For more information about the PRN Project, contact: prn@naswdc.org or Nancy Bateman/PRN, National Association of Social Workers, 750 First St., N.E., Ste. 700, Washington, DC 20002-4241. Back to NASW NEWS Contents
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