Human Services

Research for Human Services Michael R. Perkins, MSW, LCSW, Contributing Editor

This edition is adapted from a Psychology research text originally produced in 2010 by a publisher who has requested that they not receive attribution, with some material from Principles of Sociological Inquiry – Qualitative and Quantitative Methods by Amy Blackstone, University of Maine. Both published under this license:

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Forward About This Book I did not write this book. I did contribute, rewrote parts of it, created some original material, and added sections. My role is rather amorphous. Such is the nature of an open source project like this. An open source project such as this, (when it is done properly) takes on a life of its own – which is exactly what it is supposed to do. I did adapt, edit, and transform the original works (primarily an introductory text on research for Psychology students along with some material from an introductory text on research for Sociology students) into a text for Human Services majors. This book is based on those original works. Most of the material is from the psychology text. The material from the psychology text is by an author who has requested that they not receive attribution. There is also some material from another book. The author of the other book is Amy Blackstone from the University of Maine. I am deeply indebted to both of them for the work that they did, which made this derivative possible. This was all made possible through the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 US) License.

The changes I have made reflect my own view of the research process, and what I think undergraduate students in Human Services need to know. It reflects an approach developed during my first career as a Human Service practitioner, and the twenty years following that teaching an introductory research class in Social Work and Human Services. It also reflects my forays into qualitative and quantitative research over the past three decades. To that end the focus has been shifted to Human Services, and there is much less emphasis on statistics. The emphasis on this text is to assist students into becoming better consumers of quality research, rather than producers of it. I think the latter is more appropriate for graduate work, or a more advanced class specifically designed to accomplish that purpose.

Open Source Earlier I mentioned open source, so what is it exactly? Probably the best place to explore the concept is www.opensource.org . They define open source software (even though in this case it applies to a book) in terms of the license granted:

The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Notice it says software, which is where the open source concept originated, and most notably with the development of the Linux operating system which was developed using that model. However, the same concept has been adapted for other creative endeavors including the written word. This book is open source and released into the wild under a generous creative commons license. For more information on the philosophy and approach of open Source please see The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric Steven Raymond (available to read online).

I am a devoted proponent of open source efforts such as Linux, Libre Office, and the growing number of textbooks that are being made available free to the public.

And finally, many thanks to Rebecca Whitworth who has joined me in this project, and who made, and continues to make, many contributions.