Social workers

Social workers strive to make informed decisions about the interventions they implement. These decisions
should be driven by what the research data say. As a result, social workers have been called to systematically
evaluate the effectiveness of the interventions they implement. A common way to evaluate interventions is to
use a single-subject design. This involves monitoring an outcome for an intervention implemented for one
client. After a social worker works with the client to determine the outcome to be measured, the following steps
to the evaluation might look like this:
Administer the instrument before the intervention is implemented
Implement the intervention
Administer the same instrument, after a specified time period
Monitor to determine if there have been any changes in the outcome
In this Discussion, you use the lens of resiliency theory when reflecting on a case from your fieldwork, and then
you consider how to measure the effectiveness of a possible intervention.
To prepare, read this article listed in the Learning Resources:
Smith-Osborne, A., & Whitehill Bolton K. (2013). Assessing resilience: A review of measures across the life
course. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work, 10(2), 111–126. doi:10.1080/15433714.2011.597305
By Day 3
Post:
Reflect on your fieldwork experience, and identify a case where it would have been beneficial to employ
resiliency theory. Describe the case in 2 sentences.
Describe the presenting problem in one concise sentence.
Describe an intervention you would implement to promote resiliency.
Identify an instrument from the Smith-Osborne and Whitehill Bolton’s article that would be appropriate when
employing a single-subject design to evaluate how effective the intervention is in increasing the client’s level of
resiliency.
Explain why you selected the instrument.
In other words, why would the instrument be appropriate? (Consider the age of the client and for whom the
instrument was designed, how feasible it would be to administer the instrument such as cost, time to administer
it, etc.)