Research Methods for Engaging Place in Social Work Research

The 2020s have highlighted the centrality of place in our health and wellbeing. People's relationships with our natural and built environments have been transformed and destabilized in the wake of numerous crises, including COVID-19 and associated lockdowns, escalations of climate-related disasters such as wildfires and floods, and violence and mass destruction in Afghanistan and Ukraine. These events highlight the importance of place in ongoing local, state, national, and global crises. They underscore the need for social work research to better understand and address how place impacts individuals, families, and communities, especially as the impacts of place-based upheavals fall most heavily on the marginalized communities we serve.

Social work's commitment to meet people where they are connects people across different places (e.g., hospitals, homes, parks, shelters, residential facilities, community centers, schools, refugee camps). These connections have informed generations of practice knowledge about how place-based differences in resources, access, and regulations inequitably impact individual and collective well-being. However, social work's applied place knowledge is not matched by similar investments in research grounded in critically-engaged, place-focused theory. Nor does social work research adequately draw on the wide range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies that other disciplines use to better understand and center place.

In response to this gap, this workshop focuses on strengthening place-focused critical inquiry in social work research. Through comprehensive theoretical and methodological content and small group work, it helps attendees: build confidence in research that engages with place; gain knowledge of place-focused theories and methods; and connect with other scholars interested in place-focused research. The workshop will provide: 1) an overview of place place-based theories and methodologies, and 2) small-group discussions wherein participants will apply place-based, critically-informed frameworks to their own research.

Place Theory and Methods: Facilitators will synthesize theories of place and their relationships to social work. Presenting a range of examples of place-focused research questions and methodologies from their own diverse projects, they will illustrate the ways in which everyday places sustain or undermine access to resources and opportunities, connections with others, spirituality and identity; and emotional and physical health. Facilitators will illustrate and compare novel methods for inquiry and analytic strategies across a range of place-focused techniques, all applied to social work research areas, including: place-based sampling; participant map-making; geospatial analysis and GIS; policy mapping; hierarchical modeling of location-specific contexts; and other specialized qualitative and quantitative data collection tools that prioritize the role of place.

Workshopping: Following the presentation, facilitators will use broad groupings of SSWR clusters and topics to create and lead small group discussions. In these groups, attendees will be supported in appraising how place-based theories and methods can be incorporated into their own research priorities. Participants will design topic-specific research questions through the lens of place and develop their own inquiry of place within their particular research interests.

Take-homes: Participants be able to identity theoretical and methodological resources relevant to place-focused social work research and have formulated a conceptual plan for incorporating place-focused research questions applied to their own areas of work and interest.