Research Statement

Political social work is an emerging area of practice, research, and theory in social work education. The term is an acknowledgment that achieving social justice requires social workers to engage with the political system, either through their professional practice, or as committed activists. My dissertation fits squarely within this understanding of political social work by looking at the relationship between social workers and elected office.

Holding elected office is one way, among many, that social workers can make a difference in their communities. To understand the attraction of elected office, I interviewed more than 20 politically active social workers, including candidates and a counterfactual sample of non-candidates. One theme that emerged from these conversations was the appreciation candidates had for the instrumental power elected office can have in their communities. They understood elected office for how their communities developed, whether services were provided with equity, how their schools performed, etc. These observations were different and distinguishing from non-candidates, and offered something the political science literature had overlooked. I developed the concept of political primacy as a way of understanding how individuals value the difference-making potential of elected office differently.

To understand the concept further, I developed a measure of political primacy[1] that allowed respondents to rank order various ways of “contributing to the community”, with “serving in local government” as one of several answer choices. The higher respondents ranked serving in local government the more they were indicating it as a better way of contributing to the community than alternatives. To test this measure’s relationship with an individual’s interest in running for office, I collected the Michigan Law & Social Work Study, a sample of 545 MSW and 200 JD students across four universities in Michigan, which represents the largest study of the political attitudes of MSW students collected thus far. In my manuscript under review in Social Work Research, I find that political primacy significantly predicts interest in running for office in both MSW and JD students.

Perhaps this means interest in running for office can be induced if it is understood as a way of making a difference in the community? In my manuscript under review in the Journal of Social Work Education, I report the results of an experiment, which presented MSW students in the MLSWS with a scenario in which several members of city council were retiring. The experiment quoted a retiring city council member as saying she was really glad she ran because having a seat on city council (a) allowed her to make a bigger difference in the community than she would have been able to make as a private citizen, or (b) gave her status and name recognition she would not have had otherwise. Micro-practice students from less politically socialized households significantly increased their interest in running for one of the open seats on city council when exposed to the difference-making frame.

The limited reach of the experiment is an indication that MSW students have pre-existing information about elected office and, importantly, their qualifications for it. Indeed, in my article in Social Work, I find that compared to all other groups in the MLSWS, female MSW students doubted their qualifications to run for office. Moreover, these doubts acted as a significant drag on their interest in running for office.

To bring this research to scale, I am the co-investigator (along with Jason Ostrander of Sacred Heart University, and Mary Hylton of the University of Nevada-Reno) of the National Study of the Political Participation of Clinical Social Workers. This study has accumulated information on over 125,000 licensed social workers across 25 states. We expect the data to reveal important information about how social workers understand the political system as a tool for social justice, as well as their interest in engaging with it as candidates for elected office.

My research is adding to the political social work knowledge base. As a junior faculty member I will continue to research political primacy and how social workers understand the political system as a way of making a difference. I am particularly interested in differences I observed in the MLSWS between men and women in their interest in running and sense of qualifications to run. I want to understand where these feelings are coming from, and what we can do as social work educators to make women in social work feel more inspired to take the reins of political power in this country. Are their projects that instill confidence in students? How much success in politics do students need to believe that change in possible? These are questions I look forward to taking up soon.

Following the 2016 Presidential election, schools of social work are looking for ways to engage with the political system and imbue their activist students with hope for the near future. I think schools should lean in to this moment and consider where social work is going in the 21^st century. If not social workers, then who should be making decisions that affect the lives of vulnerable children and families? If not through politics, then how do we achieve social justice? These questions are likely to grow louder as political social work becomes a greater area of interest. My research is consistent with this movement within the field.

[1] This measure was pre-tested twice through Amazon.com’s Mechanical Turk platform, on a total of 1215 respondents.