SOCIAL WORK AND MANAGEMENT ›› 2021, Vol. 21 ›› Issue (6): 5-13.

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Method-Based, Theory-Driven and Mechanism Analysis: Three Approaches for Social Work Service Effect Evaluation

LIU Jiang1, GU Donghui2   

  1. 1. School of Public Affairs, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, 210094, China;
    2. School of Social Development and Public Policy, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200433, China
  • Received:2021-06-08 Online:2021-11-15 Published:2021-12-14

Abstract: Causality is embedded in the effectsevaluation of social work services. Influenced by the ontology of causality, there are two approaches to evaluate the effects of social work services. One is to explore the regular relationship between services and results based on social science research methods, and the other is to explain the regular relationship between services and results based on theory. The former belongs to statistical interpretation, while the latter belongs to mechanism interpretation. In order to integrate the statistical interpretation and the mechanism interpretation, under the guidance of pragmatism mechanism and process tracing, this paper puts forward two different methods of social work service effect evaluation: “experience-method-theory” and “theory-method-experience”.

Key words: social work evaluation, causal mechanism, method-based, theory-driven

CLC Number: 

  • C916
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