Theoretical foundations: social work ethics and critical social work practice
Chapter 4 Study Design
4.5 Data analysis and management
4.5.3 Analyzing the social work journal
For the analysis of the group interview with social work academics the data from the interview was selectively transcribed. General tensions and behaviors of academics toward some specific issues were identified and field notes were kept from the numerous audio hearings of the group interview. In contrast, all individual interviews were fully transcribed verbatim.
4.5.3 Analyzing the social work journal
The review of the journal started from the publishing year of 1990 to 2007. Notes and photocopies from journal articles relevant to my study were kept and analyzed accordingly. The review started from the year of 1990 as the researcher‟s background as a social work student in Greece and her previous familiarity with the journal helped her to assume that there are not many published articles relevant to the social work ethics. Each edition contains 4-10 theoretical and/or research articles. During this period, seventy editions were published and sixty seven were located. The journal is only available in paper copy and three editions were missing from the HASW or university library. Each article‟s title and abstract was reviewed using the following key words: ethics, values, ethical dilemmas, ethical decision, morality, moral judgment and human rights. With these key words only nine articles were identified (see Table 3). The review of the journal articles followed a thematic analysis in which the researcher was looking for themes relevant to social work ethics (Boyatzis, 1998).
As there were only nine articles detected being relevant to social work ethics an attentive and repeated reading was possible. Each article was analysed separately but no comparisons were made among them. The major focus of the document analysis was to detect and interpret thematic categories from the content of the articles. Therefore, small texts from the articles were copied or highlighted when necessary so as to understand the meaning of the articles. Particular attention was paid to the theories used from authors for addressing their topics. When these were
not explicit I was reading the references used so as to gain a sense of where the author is
“coming from”.
Conclusion
This study was underpinned by the naturalistic paradigm and interpretation that suggests a specific way of thinking about how social reality can be understood and studied. Consequently, this thesis adopted a qualitative methodology. Particularly, this study was designed as a single case study and followed several commitments all relevant to qualitative case studies. One important commitment was to study the social work ethical dilemmas in a specific cultural, political and organizational context of a small group of social workers who all work in public hospitals in Greece. Therefore, purposive sampling was employed to ensure that all participants would share particular context realities.
In addition, as this study was underpinned by the naturalistic paradigm the aim of this study was not to produce generalizations or clear relationships between causes and effects. Contrarily, the focus of this study was to highlight the complexity of the ethical dilemmas that social workers face in their daily practice, and the simultaneous interaction of numerous factors that construct the ways that the social workers dealt with ethical dilemmas. However, the single case study design provided more focused fieldwork, and data from two other subunits of analysis (HASW and social work education) was collected to shed light on their influence on the ways that social workers perceive and behave towards their ethical dilemmas.
The usage of in-depth interviews in this study gave space to the participants‟ voices to articulate with their own words how they perceive and experience their reality. The selection of in-depth interviewing was also in line with the basic aim of this study which was to explore the meaning, not the frequency, of the ethical dilemmas experienced by the particular group of social workers.
The collection and analysis of the data followed the principles described by Yin (1993). In particular, this study followed a descriptive strategy of analysis since the focus of the study was to provide an in-depth description of the meaning of ethics and ethical dilemmas of social workers.
In this study there were four main sources of research data:
1. Fourteen interviews with hospital social workers;
2. One interview with a member of the Hellenic Association of Social Workers;
3. One group interview with three social work academics; and
4. Review and exploration of articles from the journal “Social Work” published by the Hellenic Association of Social Workers.
From these data a thematic analysis enabled the identification of the emerging themes, patterns and links between the different sources of data that altogether provided a meaningful understanding of social work ethics and ethical dilemmas in public hospitals in Greece. The process of data analysis, including verbatim transcription of the interviews, keeping memos and notes, was done with the assistance of the NVivo software program. This process enabled the construction of meanings and the revelation of patterns of social workers‟ behaviors and differences among them. In addition, one of the purposes of data analysis was to enable the presentation of social and organizational factors, and characteristics of the social workers.
This study was also designed in accordance with the guidelines of the Ethics Committee of Brunel University. This ensured that the dissemination of the results of this thesis will not harm any participant. All participants were voluntary and were fully informed of the aims of the study.
Written consent was obtained from all participants, and approval letters from the administration boards of each public hospital.
The presentation of the findings that follow with the next two chapters is a systematic effort based on the naturalistic paradigm and case study approach to understand the ethical dilemmas of social workers who practice in public hospitals in Greece. In addition, the finding are presented to show how ethics play a part in what is perceived as “good” social work practice.