Innovative Methods for Disseminating Social Work Scholarship

Social work scholars often aspire to disseminate their research to larger audiences in order to translate to real world impact. However, tools and skills for dissemination are rarely taught in graduate school (beyond peer review) and are also constantly changing due to new technologies. Our grand challenges, ethics, and the SSWR commitment to translating research findings compels us to reach further than peer-reviewed journals in order to see social work scholarship making a difference in policy, practice, and discourses of social problems. This workshop will teach how research findings, frameworks and scholarship can be disseminated to a larger audience with the goal of impact that transforms other disciplines and reaches communities and stakeholders outside the academy. The authors will discuss traditional outlets (mainstream news, university presses), technologically driven outlets (twitter, social media, podcasts, YouTube), as well as ways to make data and findings more succinct and impactful (policy briefs, white papers, and public testimony).