literature review topics in social work

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Social Work Literature Review Guidelines

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This handout provides an overview of how to write literature reviews in the field of social work. It provides a list of suggestions and examples.

Literature reviews are designed to do two things: 1) give your readers an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic or idea and 2) demonstrate how your research fits into the larger field of study, in this case, social work.

Unlike annotated bibliographies which are lists of references arranged alphabetically that include the bibliographic citation and a paragraph summary and critique for each source, literature reviews can be incorporated into a research paper or manuscript. You may quote or paraphrase from the sources, and all references to sources should include in-text parenthetical citations with a reference list at the end of the document. Sometimes, however, an instructor may require a separate literature review document and will have specific instructions for completing the assignment.

Below you will find general guidelines to consider when developing a literature review in the field of social work. Because social work is a social science field, you will most likely be required to use APA style. Please see our APA materials for information on creating parenthetical citations and reference lists.

1. Choose a variety of articles that relate to your subject, even if they do not directly answer your research question. You may find articles that loosely relate to the topic, rather than articles that you find using an exact keyword search. At first, you may need to cast a wide net when searching for sources.

For example: If your research question focuses on how people with chronic illnesses are treated in the workplace, you may be able to find some articles that address this specific question. You may also find literature regarding public perception of people with chronic illnesses or analyses of current laws affecting workplace discrimination.

2. Select the most relevant information from the articles as it pertains to your subject and your purpose. Remember, the purpose of the literature review is to demonstrate how your research question fits into a larger field of study.

3. Critically examine the articles. Look at methodology, statistics, results, theoretical framework, the author's purpose, etc. Include controversies when they appear in the articles.

For example: You should look for the strengths and weaknesses of how the author conducted the study. You can also decide whether or not the study is generalizable to other settings or whether the findings relate only to the specific setting of the study. Ask yourself why the author conducted the study and what he/she hoped to gain from the study. Look for inconsistencies in the results, as well.

4. Organize your information in the way that makes most sense. Some literature reviews may begin with a definition or general overview of the topic. Others may focus on another aspect of your topic. Look for themes in the literature or organize by types of study.

For example: Group case studies together, especially if all the case studies have related findings, research questions, or other similarities.

5. Make sure the information relates to your research question/thesis. You may need to explicitly show how the literature relates to the research question; don't assume that the connection is obvious.

6. Check to see that you have done more than simply summarize your sources. Your literature review should include a critical assessment of those sources. For more information, read the Experimental Psychology - Writing a Literature Review handout for questions to think about when reading sources.

7. Be sure to develop questions for further research. Again, you are not simply regurgitating information, but you are assessing and leading your reader to questions of your own, questions and ideas that haven't been explored yet or haven't been addressed in detail by the literature in the field.

Social Work Research Topics

Table of contents

• 1 What is a Social Work Research Paper?
• 2 Tips for Selecting a Good Topic for a Social Work Research Paper
• 3.1 Social Work Research Topics for Beginners
• 3.2 Social Work Research Topics for College Students
• 3.3 Human Services Research Paper Topics
• 3.4 Interesting Social Work Research Paper Topics
• 3.5 Controversial Social Work Research Paper Topics
• 3.6 Social Work Thesis Topics
• 3.7 Critical Social Work Research Paper
• 3.8 Disputable Social Work Research Topics
• 3.9 Social Work Topics for Presentation
• 3.10 Social Work Research Paper for Literature Review

With these topics in mind, you can explore further into the field of social work and gain a better understanding of how research can help shape our society for the better. Read on to learn what is a social research paper, review helpful tips to select one, and explore a list of the 100 best social work research topics ideas.

What is a Social Work Research Paper?

A social work research paper is a document that presents facts, analysis, and research findings about a particular social work topic. Students often find it overwhelming to find the best social work topics for their research papers. Also, it’s not always possible to buy research paper and avoid the investigation altogether. Researching and writing about these topics can help students understand the causes of social issues and how to address them best.

It also provides insights into how to improve services for those who are most vulnerable and in need of assistance. The most popular social work research topics are those that treat issues of this kind, and they can be excellent as research papers.

However, focusing on the most popular research topics for social work is not the only option. It is important for students to analyze the topic they like and learn more about it. Even better if the work can somehow help solve a problem in their community. A research paper with factually accurate data and information can help you make your project look more engaging and informative. But it can also have an impact right away.

For these reasons, writing a research paper on social work can be a rewarding experience for students. It allows them to expand their knowledge along with developing a sense of empathy towards the community. Furthermore, it is important to select a topic that is relevant to the field of social work and provides enough scope for further exploration.

Tips for Selecting a Good Topic for a Social Work Research Paper

There are many topics in the field of social work that are important for understanding various aspects of social problems, their causes, and effective solutions. Research in this area can take many forms, including quantitative studies and qualitative interviews.

To write an effective social work paper, students should learn how to identify and assess topics that can add value to their project. Selecting topics that allow you to develop evidence-based interventions and include the necessary amount of information can be helpful. When selecting a topic, consider the various aspects of social work, such as its history, current trends, legal implications, and ethical considerations. Generally speaking, choose a topic that is flexible enough to conduct research and analysis.

Additionally, look for topics that allow you to focus on one particular area without getting overwhelmed by the amount of information available. Having access to adequate resources such as journals and books that provide in-depth information about your chosen topic is also helpful. Also, don’t forget to interview a social worker active in the field to have first-hand impressions. This will make it easier to select a good topic for your social work research paper.

You can also consider getting help for your research paper from professional writers. They can help you manage all aspects of the process, including choosing a suitable topic. In some cases, you can also get a “ write my research paper ” option. This allows you to get the job done by a professional or get a piece that you only have to fine-tune. Another piece of advice is to do a quick scan of available resources, both offline and online. Moreover, choose a unique and practical topic that differentiates you from other students.

Here are some additional tips to help you select a good topic for a social work research paper.

Read Extensively. Reading widely about a general topic that interests you is crucial. Consider writing down the ideas, information, and sources that interest you the most. You can then review the notes to select a topic. Consider your interests and expertise in the field of social work. If you are passionate about a particular topic or have prior experience in it, then this could be the perfect place to start your research. Doing quick research on each potential topic before choosing one will help you decide whether it’s worth writing.

Select a Relevant Topic. Make sure the topic you choose is relevant to the field of social work you intend to work on or you’ve been tasked to analyse. An irrelevant topic that does not have any connection with the subject will fail to interest the readers. This may lead to a dull paper or, if you’re a student, to a low mark or a fail. Select a topic related to social work application theories. Think about the latest trends in social work and identify topics that are currently being discussed or researched by other people. Explore different current events related to social work and determine if there is anything relevant that could be best for your paper.

Choose a Specific Topic .  A research topic that is too broad or too narrow can make it difficult to carry out research. If the topic is too wide, you may end up writing in general and not including the information that is necessary. Selecting a specific topic will allow you to conduct detailed research and provide reasonable arguments and solutions. With so many potential topics to choose from, it can be difficult to narrow down the choices and select one. Fortunately, there are some steps you can take to make this process easier. Firstly, understand the context of your research paper and set specific goals to select a topic that is both meaningful and manageable.

Consider a Flexible Topic. Go with a topic that is flexible and allows you to conduct research and analysis. Find a unique topic that matches your field of interest and add value to your research paper. Choosing a flexible topic will help you provide real benefits to the readers. A flexible topic will provide you with numerous opportunities to explore different aspects of a particular issue or event. Additionally, by selecting a flexible topic that allows for multiple arguments and solutions, you can ensure that your paper is comprehensive and engaging.

Discuss With Others. Another great way to select a good social work topic for a research paper is by communicating with other students and researchers. You can also discuss it with your professors and learn about their opinions. By discussing with other students or professors, you can get different perspectives on potential topics and gain valuable insights. Moreover, talking to other people about their experiences in social work can help you discover your interest and select the best possible topic for your research paper .

Selecting a good topic for your social work research paper may feel overwhelming. With careful thought and consideration, you can find a relevant and appropriate one for the paper. To help you in this process, here is a broad list of social work research topics.

Social Work Research Topics for Beginners

Social work research papers are a great way to explain the complex issues affecting individuals, families, and communities. Newcomers can still write a persuasive research paper in this field by sharing their own experiences.

If you are a beginner, then the following research topics for social work can be best for you:

• The impacts that clinical depression has on adolescents
• Impact of alcoholism on family members and personal lifestyle
• Hardships and happiness in adopting a teenager
• How to become social workers? What are the legal requirements?
• Why do we need more women leaders in our community?
• Why it’s important to raise awareness to stop domestic violence?
• The importance of women denouncing domestic violence
• The effects of alcohol on a person’s behavior and sociality
• Depression and society: stigmas and stereotypes
• The best strategies for ensuring the health and basic education for every child

Social Work Research Topics for College Students

College students can benefit from performing in-depth research on a specific topic and applying theories, concepts, and principles of social work in their research papers. To help you select a specific topic of your interest, here are some popular ones in the field of social work:

• Possible solutions to limit child abuse in society
• How to fight the bullying of disabled children
• Effects of domestic violence on family members
• Raising a child as a single parent: challenges and strategies
• Helping bipolar patients: effective strategies
• How divorce impacts children’s lifestyle and upbringing
• Reasons and prevention of the increase in suicide rates among students
• Drugs abuse among teenagers: an insight
• The impact of interracial adoption on children’s development
• Fighting human trafficking: strategies and issues

There are a few common problems that may arise when writing a social work research paper, such as difficulty in finding relevant sources, inability to properly structure the paper or difficulty in staying focused on the topic.

Human Services Research Paper Topics

Students interested in delivering care and support to individuals or communities in need can select a human services topic for their research paper. You can find a topic related to helping empower people, providing guidance in their everyday lives, or offering resources to meet their needs.

Here are a few example topics that you may select:

• An essay on homophobia
• Causes and impacts of child trafficking
• Effective ways to deal with depression and anxiety among students
• Impact of unemployment on the society
• How to prevent the most common causes of depression among teenagers
• Gender disparity and incarceration: an overview
• Effect of feminism throughout the ages
• How does racism affect society?
• The importance of freedom of speech
• Social structure for disabled people

Interesting Social Work Research Paper Topics

While the following social work research topics list will help you find a good topic, communicating with experts in this field is also helpful. Consider choosing a topic that will make an impact on society and provide value to your audience.

• How does parental drug use impact children?
• Changing career to social work: what does it take?
• The development of social work throughout the history
• Women and alcohol
• What are the benefits of free education?
• Why should the educational system be accessible to everyone?
• Abortion: history and modern thoughts
• Is feminism a plot of modern society?
• Effective ways to decrease criminal activities
• The influence of war and peace on children’s minds

Controversial Social Work Research Paper Topics

It is important to note that the following research paper topics may be controversial and complex. Approaching controversial research topics with sensitivity and conducting thorough research before drawing any conclusions can help you write a good research paper .

• Does the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy enhance the lives of jailed people’s lives?
• What do people think about war in our peaceful times?
• Racial profiling for criminal cases: is it really effective?
• Impact of abortion on women
• The importance of receiving family support for LGBT teenagers
• Effects of community on the mental health of minorities
• Depression: Major symptoms and causes
• How the criminal justice system benefits from social workers
• Preventing suicide in schools: understanding reasons and finding solutions
• Does poverty affect your mental health?

Social Work Thesis Topics

A social work thesis is a research paper that focuses on a specific topic related to social work practice. A good thesis can demonstrate your ability to conduct independent research and apply theoretical concepts to address various social work issues and causes.

Explore this list to find a suitable topic for your social work thesis:

• Conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ individuals: definition and effects
• Use of medication in treating mental health disorders
• How does social media affect mental health?
• Immigration policies: Impact on families and children
• Race and racism affecting mental health
• Restorative justice programs in the criminal justice system
• Police brutality on communities of color
• The impact of climate change on vulnerable populations
• Strategies social workers can use to address income inequality
• Healing from domestic violence: Tips and advice

Critical Social Work Research Paper

If you want to focus on ongoing critical issues in this field then here are a few interesting topics for you:

• Effectiveness of therapy and why it works for some.
• Mindfulness and its importance in the process of recovery
• The effectiveness of wellness therapy
• Is mental health neglected in low-income and poor households
• Social integration of individuals with Down syndrome
• Everything about drug rehabilitation programs
• The impact of psychological abuse in promoting low self-esteem
• The current role of government in improving welfare conditions
• How does stress response in children with autism work?
• In-depth analysis of children raised in abusive homes

Disputable Social Work Research Topics

By writing on disputable social issues essay topics , you can explain the current state of society and an important way to raise awareness on a variety of issues. From racism to gender inequality, there are plenty of topics that can be explored in a research paper. Before you start writing, gain insight into why certain disputable problems exist and explore potential solutions.

Here is a list of disputable research topics for social work:

• Why some people become shopaholics
• Best ways to improve the participation of adolescents in the development of the local community
• What’s the effect of welfare policies in fighting poverty
• A report on AIDS caregivers and their experience
• Best practices to improve the health system in rural areas
• What is fuelling racism on a global level?
• Couple therapy in building relationships: Pros and cons
• Addressing workplace violence: Steps for leaders and managers
• An overview of social problems faced by autistic children
• How income and behavioral health are connected

Social Work Topics for Presentation

You can make your presentation more engaging by adding relevant graphs, charts, or images. Start by selecting and researching a topic that is relevant to your audience. The following list of social work topics to research can help you create an engaging presentation:

• Child welfare and protection
• Immigration and refugees
• Community development and empowerment
• Mental health services and support
• LGBTQ+ rights and advocacy
• Aging and elder care
• Homelessness and housing insecurity
• Domestic violence and abuse
• Disability rights and services
• Social work integration in healthcare services

Social Work Research Paper for Literature Review

A  literature review should be written in a way that covers the most recent and relevant research in the field. Here are some common social work topics suitable for a literature review:

• Understanding the significance of poverty on child development
• Evidence-based practices in substance abuse treatment
• Nutrition assistance programs
• Juvenile justice system
• Research on the gender pay gap
• Why do some people experience homelessness?
• The importance of early childhood education
• Benefits of career counseling
• Educational achievements of childcare in America
• Welfare programs for immigrants

One of the most pressing challenges of social work researchers is finding reliable and relevant sources for their work. Online essay writers can be a great asset in this regard, as they can provide reliable information backed up by research and data. Furthermore, they can also provide creative and thoughtful insights into the topic at hand, making them invaluable resources for social work research.

While selecting a good social work topic can be challenging, the above-mentioned lists can help you write a good research paper. Once you select a topic, make sure it is relevant, interesting, and appropriate for your task or purpose.

From researching existing materials on your chosen topic to considering the scope of the project in terms of current trends in social work, there are a few things that will make your social work research paper stand out from others. Now that you have a comprehensive list of topics, you’re ready to find the best one for your needs and write a convincing and data-driven research paper for your audience.

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Doctoral Social Work Research: Literature Reviews

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Literature Review Resources

A literature review is a very practical part of the research process.  It's how you build on other research in the field - identify best practices and tools and learn what doesn't work.  The resources on the page are here to help you structure you literature review so it's as useful as possible.  

Also take a look at any literature reviews you find as you search for articles - in addition to content and further references they'll also provide helpful structural hints. 

• Social Work Literature Review Guidelines Literature reviews are designed to do two things: 1) give your readers an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic or idea and 2) demonstrate how your research fits into the larger field of study, in this case, social work.
• Considerations in Writing a Literature Review This article will briefly outline key points for you to keep in mind when writing literature reviews for social work.
• Undertaking a literature review: a step-by-step approach The purpose of this article is to present a step-by-step guide to facilitate understanding by presenting the critical elements of the literature review process. While reference is made to different types of literature reviews, the focus is on the traditional or narrative review that is undertaken, usually either as an academic assignment or part of the research process.

"Literature reviews are systematic syntheses of previous work around a particular topic. Nearly all scholars have written literature reviews at some point; such reviews are common requirements for class projects or as part of theses, are often the first section of empirical papers, and are sometimes written to summarize a field of study. Given the increasing amount of literature in many fields, reviews are critical in synthesizing scientific knowledge." - Encyclopedia of Research Design

• Literature Review Overview and Sample Paper (University of Arizona)
• Sample APA Paper (lit. review begins page 3)
• Why search here? ProQuest Dissertations and Theses: Global (PQDTGlobal) is the world's most comprehensive collection of full-text dissertations and theses.
• What's included? PQDTGlobal includes millions of searchable citations to dissertations and theses from 1861 to the present day together with over a million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format.

• CSU, Chico Office of Graduate Studies - Thesis Assistance Instructions, policies, and guidelines for graduate studies theses/projects.
• CSU, Chico Writing Center Make a one-on-one appointment with a writing tutor to help with your writing assignments.
• Learn How to Write a Review of the Literature University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Literature Review: An Overview for Graduate Students Video overview by North Carolina State University Libraries
• Literature Review: The What, Why and How-to Guide University of Connecticut University Libraries
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Frequently Asked Questions (And Answers) About Literature Reviews

• Literature Review FAQ
• Literature Review FAQ Videos

If you feel overwhelmed or confused about writing a literature review, you are not alone! Read on for some frequently asked questions about literature reviews...

What is a literature review?

Flip the words around and you have the beginning of your answer: a review of the literature.

“The literature”  means scholarly sources (mostly academic journal articles and books) conducted on a specific topic.

“Review”  means that you’ve read that work carefully in order to create a piece of writing that  organizes, summarizes, analyzes, and makes connections between sources , as well as  identifying areas of research still needed .

Why write a literature review?

A lit review can serve several purposes:

• Orient the reader to a topic of study  in order to validate the need for a new study.
• Reveal patterns or problems in previous research , which is its own kind of “finding” or result.

In primary research that includes the results of an experiment or fieldwork, it precedes the results and  sets up a later discussion of the results  in the context of previous findings.

What is the difference between a literature review and an annotated bibliography?

There is not just one way to write a literature review or an annotated bibliography, so differences vary. However,  one of the main differences is that an annotated bibliography is typically organized source by source —each one has its own paragraph of explanation, analysis, etc.

In a literature review, the   writing is organized thematically , often with multiple sources addressed in each paragraph, and there is an overarching narrative driving the review.

Although there are “bibliographic essays” that are essentially narratively-driven annotated bibliographies ,  in general  annotated bibliographies are a drafting step toward a more formal piece of writing , while a literature review is more likely to be that more formal piece itself.

Ok, what about the difference between a literature review and a research paper?

Here’s a secret: there’s no such thing as “A Research Paper.” There are papers that use research in many different ways, and a literature review is one of those ways. Typically, though, if your assignment is specifically to write a “literature review,” it may mean you are being asked to focus  less  on creating your own argument, driven by a thesis with research as supporting evidence, and more on  finding something to say based on the patterns and questions of the research you’ve read .

How should I organize a literature review?

Typically,  literature reviews are organized thematically , not chronologically or source by source. This means that you will need to identify several sub-topics and figure out how to group sources to tell a story in themes. Some sources may show up in multiple sections, and some sources will only appear once. For practical suggestions on how to organize, see  organizing a literature review (as of 3/23/20: in progress!).

How comprehensive should my review be?

This really depends on the assignment or type of literature review that you’re doing. Some reviews are quite extensive and aim to be “exhaustive,” looking at every article on a particular topic. Chances are, yours is not that. For guidance  you may want to ask your professor this question , or more specific questions like, “should I consider articles published more than 20 years ago? What about 10?” etc.

You may also want to consider  if it makes sense to narrow your focus to a particular region, demographic, or even type of study or article,  such as focusing on specific methods used.

Finally,  the scope of your review may also be influenced by the state of prior research . If you are exploring a relatively under-researched or interdisciplinary topic, you may draw from a broader and more diverse set of articles. If you are looking at something that has a well-established scholarly history, your focus will likely be much narrower.

How do I know if I’m “done” researching/haven’t missed anything?

The truth is, research is never “done.” But it’s true you have to come to a stopping point so you can write and finish your review! Here are a few tips for making this assessment:

• You see the same authors being cited over and over again in your sources and you have those sources, too . That can be a sign that you’ve hit on a particular scholarly conversation and identified most of the major voices in it.
• Ask a librarian to help you!  While librarians are great at finding sources, we can also help you determine if there are no more sources available to find. 
• Outline your review  and make sure that each section of your review is supported by adequate research. If you have sections that are much lighter than others, you may want to give those a second look.
• Make sure you’ve given yourself achievable parameters . If you feel like there are just thousands more articles on your exact topic, you may need to narrow yours down, or at least explain why you have selected certain articles instead of other, similar ones.
• Finally, don’t forget  to evaluate as you write . It’s likely that the writing process itself will help you determine whether you have the sources you need to achieve your goals.

A literature review can be challenging, and requires a lot of careful thinking as well as the steps of finding articles and writing. But with time, patience, and help, you can do it, and you'll be proud of the results once you're done.

Gallin-Parisi, A. (n.d.).  Social Science Research Skills . Coates Library: Trinity University.  https://libguides.trinity.edu/socialresearch/faq

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Further Reading

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What is a Literature Review?

A literature review, generally, is a summary and synthesis of existing research on a topic. Most scholarly articles or papers include a literature review to introduce the research question or thesis. But some literature reviews stand alone as individual papers.

There are also different types of review articles that have other purposes; read more below.

If you are asked to write a literature review for an assignment, read the instructions and consult with your instructor to be sure you understand exactly what is expected of the literature review for this assignment.

• Literature Reviews - UNC Writing Center An introduction to literature reviews and ways to organize a literature review.
• The Literature Review: Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper - USC Libraries A good overview including types of literature reviews, ways to organize a literature review, and a recommended process.
• Social Work Literature Review Guidelines Brief guidelines from Purdue OWL
• Social Work Research Skills Workbook : A Step-By-Step Guide to Conducting Agency-Based Research Chapter 3, Review of the Literature, provides excellent guidance on conducting a literature review. This library ebook requires an EMU NetID.

More Types of Review Articles

Review articles are generally a kind of secondary source.  That is, they are not presenting empirical findings from a single research project.  They are, however, original , in the sense that the author is using skill, knowledge and creativity to compile and write something new about the material (books, articles) under review.

There are several kinds of review articles.  Book Reviews are a special case, because sometimes they are written by experts but sometimes they are written by journalists or just fans of the book. Typically, a book review describes the main contents of the book, how it relates to existing ideas or works, and gives a judgment as to its value to various readers.  Some book reviews are just a paragraph, but the reviews in scholarly journals can be several pages.  In Esearch, you can limit search results to book reviews only, or screen book reviews out of the results, by clicking into the left-hand column under Content Type . 

Stand-alone Review Articles or Literature Reviews are common in the social sciences. The authors of these articles are experts, usually scholars. The review articles will address a current topic, lay out the main theories or ideas, recent developments in research, and suggest where further research is needed. Typical review articles are published in series such as:

• Annual Reviews This link opens in a new window Critical reviews of primary research literature in the sciences and social sciences. EMU access does not include the most recent 5 years.

In the health fields, Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses are articles that go a step further. Not only do they summarize and research on a topic, but they carefully analyze the research and may attempt to draw conclusions based on the compiled studies.  For more on these kinds of reviews, see:

• What is a Systematic Review? (Curtin Univ) This guide distinguishes several different kinds of reviews, such as literature review, systematic review, scoping review, etc.
• What is a systematic review? (Cochrane)
• Systematic Reviews (EPPI centre)

Search relevant library databases and other resources as part of your literature review. Use the sources recommended on these sections of the Social Work guide:

• Find Articles

Use Key Articles to Find More Sources

Approaches for finding more sources related to key articles. Many library databases offer these features:

• References - look for relevant sources cited in the key article
• Cited By - find more recent sources that cite the key article
• Related Items / Related Articles - finds sources that the database calculates to be related to the key article.

Google Scholar : look for Cited By and Related articles links

Esearch : look for References / Cited by links

Reading Research Articles

• How to Read a Social Science Journal Article Explains the structure of a research article and offers tips for reading strategically.
• Notetaking template for reading research articles Copy this Google Doc template and use it to take organized notes when reading research articles.
• Use a Literature Matrix for Note Taking How to use a matrix to summarize and synthesize the sources you read. Matrix templates available for Microsoft Word and Excel .

Organizing References

• Citation Tools Zotero and other citation tools are useful for saving and organizing your sources, and also help you create citations and reference lists.
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Social Work Research Guide: Literature Review

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Literature Review Overview

NCSU. (n.d.). “Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students.” [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/t2d7y_r65HU

What is a literature review?

A literature review is a systematic review of the published literature on a specific topic or research question.  The literature review is designed to analyze-- not just summarize-- scholarly writings that are related directly to your research question.  That is, it represents the literature that provides background information on your topic and shows a correspondence between those writings and your research question.

University of Pittsburgh. (n.d.).  Retrieved from  http://pitt.libguides.com/c.php?g=210872&p=1391698

• Social Work Literature Review Guidelines

Planning your literature review

Planning your literature review.

Writing a literature review will take time to gather and analyze the research relevant to your topic, so it best to start early and give yourself enough time to gather and analyze your sources.  The process of writing a literature review usually covers the following steps:

• Define your Research question
• Plan your approach to your research and your review
• Search the Literature
• Analyze the material you’ve found
• Manage the results of your research
• Write your Review

Defining Your Research Question

One of the hardest parts of a literature review is developing a good research question.  You don't want a research question that is so broad it encompasses too many research areas and can't be reasonably answered. 

Defining your topic may require an initial review of literature to get a sense of the scope about your topic.   Select a topic of interest, and do a preliminary search to see what kinds of research is being done and what is trending in that area.  This will give you a better sense of the subject and help you focus your research question.

In specifying your topic or research question, you should think about setting appropriate limitations on the research you are seeking. Limiting, for example, by time, personnel, gender, age, location, nationality etc. results in a more focused and meaningful topic. 

Using an example from the Duke University Writing Studio, you may start with a general question: 

Why did the chicken cross the road ?  This question is so general that you could be gathering relevant research for days. 

A more precise research question might be: 

What are some of the environmental factors that occurred in New York City between November and December 2017 that would cause a chicken to cross Amsterdam Avenue at 185th Street?   This research question is specific about a number of variables like time, geography, etc.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature:

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevant sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem
• Relying exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data
• Uncritically accepting another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis
• Not describing the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review
• Reporting isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and not considering contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature

USC. (n.d.). Retrieved from  http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/literaturereview

• When working on a literature review, it's a good idea to save your research in a citation manager such as RefWorks or Zotero.
• If a book or article is not available in the YU Libraries, it can be ordered through Interlibrary Loan.  You should never need to pay for your information.
• The Dissertations & Theses Global database is a good place to start.  You will see what research has already been done on your topic.
• For more detailed information, see below:
• Systematic Literature Searching in Social Work: A Practical Guide with Database Appraisal
• Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples
• Literature Reviews (From UNC College of Arts & Sciences)
• The Literature Review: a Few Tips on Conducting It
• Conducting a Literature Review: A Brief Interactive Tutorial

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• The Literature Review

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A literature review surveys books, scholarly articles, and any other sources relevant to a particular issue, area of research, or theory, and by so doing, provides a description, summary, and critical evaluation of these works in relation to the research problem being investigated. Literature reviews are designed to provide an overview of sources you have explored while researching a particular topic and to demonstrate to your readers how your research fits within a larger field of study.

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . Fourth edition. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2014.

Importance of a Good Literature Review

A literature review may consist of simply a summary of key sources, but in the social sciences, a literature review usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis, often within specific conceptual categories . A summary is a recap of the important information of the source, but a synthesis is a re-organization, or a reshuffling, of that information in a way that informs how you are planning to investigate a research problem. The analytical features of a literature review might:

• Give a new interpretation of old material or combine new with old interpretations,
• Trace the intellectual progression of the field, including major debates,
• Depending on the situation, evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant research, or
• Usually in the conclusion of a literature review, identify where gaps exist in how a problem has been researched to date.

The purpose of a literature review is to:

• Place each work in the context of its contribution to understanding the research problem being studied.
• Describe the relationship of each work to the others under consideration.
• Identify new ways to interpret prior research.
• Reveal any gaps that exist in the literature.
• Resolve conflicts amongst seemingly contradictory previous studies.
• Identify areas of prior scholarship to prevent duplication of effort.
• Point the way in fulfilling a need for additional research.
• Locate your own research within the context of existing literature [very important].

Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2011; Knopf, Jeffrey W. "Doing a Literature Review." PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January 2006): 127-132; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012.

Types of Literature Reviews

It is important to think of knowledge in a given field as consisting of three layers. First, there are the primary studies that researchers conduct and publish. Second are the reviews of those studies that summarize and offer new interpretations built from and often extending beyond the primary studies. Third, there are the perceptions, conclusions, opinion, and interpretations that are shared informally that become part of the lore of field.

In composing a literature review, it is important to note that it is often this third layer of knowledge that is cited as "true" even though it often has only a loose relationship to the primary studies and secondary literature reviews. Given this, while literature reviews are designed to provide an overview and synthesis of pertinent sources you have explored, there are a number of approaches you could adopt depending upon the type of analysis underpinning your study.

Argumentative Review This form examines literature selectively in order to support or refute an argument, deeply imbedded assumption, or philosophical problem already established in the literature. The purpose is to develop a body of literature that establishes a contrarian viewpoint. Given the value-laden nature of some social science research [e.g., educational reform; immigration control], argumentative approaches to analyzing the literature can be a legitimate and important form of discourse. However, note that they can also introduce problems of bias when they are used to make summary claims of the sort found in systematic reviews [see below].

Integrative Review Considered a form of research that reviews, critiques, and synthesizes representative literature on a topic in an integrated way such that new frameworks and perspectives on the topic are generated. The body of literature includes all studies that address related or identical hypotheses or research problems. A well-done integrative review meets the same standards as primary research in regard to clarity, rigor, and replication. This is the most common form of review in the social sciences.

Historical Review Few things rest in isolation from historical precedent. Historical literature reviews focus on examining research throughout a period of time, often starting with the first time an issue, concept, theory, phenomena emerged in the literature, then tracing its evolution within the scholarship of a discipline. The purpose is to place research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the-art developments and to identify the likely directions for future research.

Methodological Review A review does not always focus on what someone said [findings], but how they came about saying what they say [method of analysis]. Reviewing methods of analysis provides a framework of understanding at different levels [i.e. those of theory, substantive fields, research approaches, and data collection and analysis techniques], how researchers draw upon a wide variety of knowledge ranging from the conceptual level to practical documents for use in fieldwork in the areas of ontological and epistemological consideration, quantitative and qualitative integration, sampling, interviewing, data collection, and data analysis. This approach helps highlight ethical issues which you should be aware of and consider as you go through your own study.

Systematic Review This form consists of an overview of existing evidence pertinent to a clearly formulated research question, which uses pre-specified and standardized methods to identify and critically appraise relevant research, and to collect, report, and analyze data from the studies that are included in the review. The goal is to deliberately document, critically evaluate, and summarize scientifically all of the research about a clearly defined research problem . Typically it focuses on a very specific empirical question, often posed in a cause-and-effect form, such as "To what extent does A contribute to B?" This type of literature review is primarily applied to examining prior research studies in clinical medicine and allied health fields, but it is increasingly being used in the social sciences.

Theoretical Review The purpose of this form is to examine the corpus of theory that has accumulated in regard to an issue, concept, theory, phenomena. The theoretical literature review helps to establish what theories already exist, the relationships between them, to what degree the existing theories have been investigated, and to develop new hypotheses to be tested. Often this form is used to help establish a lack of appropriate theories or reveal that current theories are inadequate for explaining new or emerging research problems. The unit of analysis can focus on a theoretical concept or a whole theory or framework.

Baumeister, Roy F. and Mark R. Leary. "Writing Narrative Literature Reviews."  Review of General Psychology 1 (September 1997): 311-320; Mark R. Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Kennedy, Mary M. "Defining a Literature." Educational Researcher 36 (April 2007): 139-147; Petticrew, Mark and Helen Roberts. Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences: A Practical Guide . Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2006; Torracro, Richard. "Writing Integrative Literature Reviews: Guidelines and Examples." Human Resource Development Review 4 (September 2005): 356-367; Rocco, Tonette S. and Maria S. Plakhotnik. "Literature Reviews, Conceptual Frameworks, and Theoretical Frameworks: Terms, Functions, and Distinctions." Human Ressource Development Review 8 (March 2008): 120-130; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  Thinking About Your Literature Review

The structure of a literature review should include the following :

• An overview of the subject, issue, or theory under consideration, along with the objectives of the literature review,
• Division of works under review into themes or categories [e.g. works that support a particular position, those against, and those offering alternative approaches entirely],
• An explanation of how each work is similar to and how it varies from the others,
• Conclusions as to which pieces are best considered in their argument, are most convincing of their opinions, and make the greatest contribution to the understanding and development of their area of research.

The critical evaluation of each work should consider :

• Provenance -- what are the author's credentials? Are the author's arguments supported by evidence [e.g. primary historical material, case studies, narratives, statistics, recent scientific findings]?
• Methodology -- were the techniques used to identify, gather, and analyze the data appropriate to addressing the research problem? Was the sample size appropriate? Were the results effectively interpreted and reported?
• Objectivity -- is the author's perspective even-handed or prejudicial? Is contrary data considered or is certain pertinent information ignored to prove the author's point?
• Persuasiveness -- which of the author's theses are most convincing or least convincing?
• Value -- are the author's arguments and conclusions convincing? Does the work ultimately contribute in any significant way to an understanding of the subject?

II.  Development of the Literature Review

Four Stages 1.  Problem formulation -- which topic or field is being examined and what are its component issues? 2.  Literature search -- finding materials relevant to the subject being explored. 3.  Data evaluation -- determining which literature makes a significant contribution to the understanding of the topic. 4.  Analysis and interpretation -- discussing the findings and conclusions of pertinent literature.

Consider the following issues before writing the literature review: Clarify If your assignment is not very specific about what form your literature review should take, seek clarification from your professor by asking these questions: 1.  Roughly how many sources should I include? 2.  What types of sources should I review (books, journal articles, websites; scholarly versus popular sources)? 3.  Should I summarize, synthesize, or critique sources by discussing a common theme or issue? 4.  Should I evaluate the sources? 5.  Should I provide subheadings and other background information, such as definitions and/or a history? Find Models Use the exercise of reviewing the literature to examine how authors in your discipline or area of interest have composed their literature review sections. Read them to get a sense of the types of themes you might want to look for in your own research or to identify ways to organize your final review. The bibliography or reference section of sources you've already read are also excellent entry points into your own research. Narrow the Topic The narrower your topic, the easier it will be to limit the number of sources you need to read in order to obtain a good survey of relevant resources. Your professor will probably not expect you to read everything that's available about the topic, but you'll make your job easier if you first limit scope of the research problem. A good strategy is to begin by searching the USC Libraries Catalog for books about the topic and review the table of contents for chapters that focuses on specific issues. You can also review the indexes of books to find references to specific issues that can serve as the focus of your research. For example, a book surveying the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may include a chapter on the role Egypt has played in mediating the conflict, or look in the index for the pages where Egypt is mentioned in the text. Consider Whether Your Sources are Current Some disciplines require that you use information that is as current as possible. This is particularly true in disciplines in medicine and the sciences where research conducted becomes obsolete very quickly as new discoveries are made. However, when writing a review in the social sciences, a survey of the history of the literature may be required. In other words, a complete understanding the research problem requires you to deliberately examine how knowledge and perspectives have changed over time. Sort through other current bibliographies or literature reviews in the field to get a sense of what your discipline expects. You can also use this method to explore what is considered by scholars to be a "hot topic" and what is not.

III.  Ways to Organize Your Literature Review

Chronology of Events If your review follows the chronological method, you could write about the materials according to when they were published. This approach should only be followed if a clear path of research building on previous research can be identified and that these trends follow a clear chronological order of development. For example, a literature review that focuses on continuing research about the emergence of German economic power after the fall of the Soviet Union. By Publication Order your sources by publication chronology, then, only if the order demonstrates a more important trend. For instance, you could order a review of literature on environmental studies of brown fields if the progression revealed, for example, a change in the soil collection practices of the researchers who wrote and/or conducted the studies. Thematic [“conceptual categories”] Thematic reviews of literature are organized around a topic or issue, rather than the progression of time. However, progression of time may still be an important factor in a thematic review. For example, a review of the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics could focus on the development of online political satire. While the study focuses on one topic, the Internet’s impact on American presidential politics, it will still be organized chronologically reflecting technological developments in media. The only difference here between a "chronological" and a "thematic" approach is what is emphasized the most: the role of the Internet in presidential politics. Note however that more authentic thematic reviews tend to break away from chronological order. A review organized in this manner would shift between time periods within each section according to the point made. Methodological A methodological approach focuses on the methods utilized by the researcher. For the Internet in American presidential politics project, one methodological approach would be to look at cultural differences between the portrayal of American presidents on American, British, and French websites. Or the review might focus on the fundraising impact of the Internet on a particular political party. A methodological scope will influence either the types of documents in the review or the way in which these documents are discussed.

Other Sections of Your Literature Review Once you've decided on the organizational method for your literature review, the sections you need to include in the paper should be easy to figure out because they arise from your organizational strategy. In other words, a chronological review would have subsections for each vital time period; a thematic review would have subtopics based upon factors that relate to the theme or issue. However, sometimes you may need to add additional sections that are necessary for your study, but do not fit in the organizational strategy of the body. What other sections you include in the body is up to you but include only what is necessary for the reader to locate your study within the larger scholarship framework.

Here are examples of other sections you may need to include depending on the type of review you write:

• Current Situation : information necessary to understand the topic or focus of the literature review.
• History : the chronological progression of the field, the literature, or an idea that is necessary to understand the literature review, if the body of the literature review is not already a chronology.
• Selection Methods : the criteria you used to select (and perhaps exclude) sources in your literature review. For instance, you might explain that your review includes only peer-reviewed articles and journals.
• Standards : the way in which you present your information.
• Questions for Further Research : What questions about the field has the review sparked? How will you further your research as a result of the review?

IV.  Writing Your Literature Review

Once you've settled on how to organize your literature review, you're ready to write each section. When writing your review, keep in mind these issues.

Use Evidence A literature review section is, in this sense, just like any other academic research paper. Your interpretation of the available sources must be backed up with evidence [citations] that demonstrates that what you are saying is valid. Be Selective Select only the most important points in each source to highlight in the review. The type of information you choose to mention should relate directly to the research problem, whether it is thematic, methodological, or chronological. Related items that provide additional information but that are not key to understanding the research problem can be included in a list of further readings . Use Quotes Sparingly Some short quotes are okay if you want to emphasize a point, or if what an author stated cannot be easily paraphrased. Sometimes you may need to quote certain terminology that was coined by the author, not common knowledge, or taken directly from the study. Do not use extensive quotes as a substitute for your own summary and interpretation of the literature. Summarize and Synthesize Remember to summarize and synthesize your sources within each thematic paragraph as well as throughout the review. Recapitulate important features of a research study, but then synthesize it by rephrasing the study's significance and relating it to your own work. Keep Your Own Voice While the literature review presents others' ideas, your voice [the writer's] should remain front and center. For example, weave references to other sources into what you are writing but maintain your own voice by starting and ending the paragraph with your own ideas and wording. Use Caution When Paraphrasing When paraphrasing a source that is not your own, be sure to represent the author's information or opinions accurately and in your own words. Even when paraphrasing an author’s work, you still must provide a citation to that work.

V.  Common Mistakes to Avoid

These are the most common mistakes made in reviewing social science research literature.

• Sources in your literature review do not clearly relate to the research problem;
• You do not take sufficient time to define and identify the most relevent sources to use in the literature review related to the research problem;
• Relies exclusively on secondary analytical sources rather than including relevant primary research studies or data;
• Uncritically accepts another researcher's findings and interpretations as valid, rather than examining critically all aspects of the research design and analysis;
• Does not describe the search procedures that were used in identifying the literature to review;
• Reports isolated statistical results rather than synthesizing them in chi-squared or meta-analytic methods; and,
• Only includes research that validates assumptions and does not consider contrary findings and alternative interpretations found in the literature.

Cook, Kathleen E. and Elise Murowchick. “Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?” Psychology Learning and Teaching 13 (March 2014): 3-11; Fink, Arlene. Conducting Research Literature Reviews: From the Internet to Paper . 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005; Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1998; Jesson, Jill. Doing Your Literature Review: Traditional and Systematic Techniques . London: SAGE, 2011; Literature Review Handout . Online Writing Center. Liberty University; Literature Reviews . The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2016; Ridley, Diana. The Literature Review: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students . 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE, 2012; Randolph, Justus J. “A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation . vol. 14, June 2009; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016; Taylor, Dena. The Literature Review: A Few Tips On Conducting It . University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Writing a Literature Review . Academic Skills Centre. University of Canberra.

Writing Tip

Break Out of Your Disciplinary Box!

Thinking interdisciplinarily about a research problem can be a rewarding exercise in applying new ideas, theories, or concepts to an old problem. For example, what might cultural anthropologists say about the continuing conflict in the Middle East? In what ways might geographers view the need for better distribution of social service agencies in large cities than how social workers might study the issue? You don’t want to substitute a thorough review of core research literature in your discipline for studies conducted in other fields of study. However, particularly in the social sciences, thinking about research problems from multiple vectors is a key strategy for finding new solutions to a problem or gaining a new perspective. Consult with a librarian about identifying research databases in other disciplines; almost every field of study has at least one comprehensive database devoted to indexing its research literature.

Frodeman, Robert. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity . New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Another Writing Tip

Don't Just Review for Content!

While conducting a review of the literature, maximize the time you devote to writing this part of your paper by thinking broadly about what you should be looking for and evaluating. Review not just what scholars are saying, but how are they saying it. Some questions to ask:

• How are they organizing their ideas?
• What methods have they used to study the problem?
• What theories have been used to explain, predict, or understand their research problem?
• What sources have they cited to support their conclusions?
• How have they used non-textual elements [e.g., charts, graphs, figures, etc.] to illustrate key points?

When you begin to write your literature review section, you'll be glad you dug deeper into how the research was designed and constructed because it establishes a means for developing more substantial analysis and interpretation of the research problem.

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1 998.

Yet Another Writing Tip

When Do I Know I Can Stop Looking and Move On?

Here are several strategies you can utilize to assess whether you've thoroughly reviewed the literature:

• Look for repeating patterns in the research findings . If the same thing is being said, just by different people, then this likely demonstrates that the research problem has hit a conceptual dead end. At this point consider: Does your study extend current research?  Does it forge a new path? Or, does is merely add more of the same thing being said?
• Look at sources the authors cite to in their work . If you begin to see the same researchers cited again and again, then this is often an indication that no new ideas have been generated to address the research problem.
• Search the Web of Science [a.k.a., Web of Knowledge] Citation database and Google Scholar to identify who has subsequently cited leading scholars already identified in your literature review. This is called citation tracking and there are a number of sources that can help you identify who has cited whom, particularly scholars from outside of your discipline. Here again, if the same authors are being cited again and again, this may indicate no new literature has been written on the topic.

Onwuegbuzie, Anthony J. and Rebecca Frels. Seven Steps to a Comprehensive Literature Review: A Multimodal and Cultural Approach . Los Angeles, CA: Sage, 2016; Sutton, Anthea. Systematic Approaches to a Successful Literature Review . Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications, 2016.

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300 Social Work Research Topics & Questions for Papers

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Social work research focuses primarily on studying problems experienced in social work field. The research, in this case, talks about challenges that caseworkers go through in their practice. Social work research topics cover various things, including problems in welfare work, and indicate how research can be used to gain a deep understanding of the issues. Have you been wondering how to develop an intriguing social work topic and possible areas to discuss in your research? Don't worry because this article by our online paper writing service covers all your concerns. The blog post will provide some social work research topic ideas that you can consider for your social work research.

What Are Social Work Research Topics?

Social work research topics are areas of study that involve applying research methodology to comprehend sectors that are challenging for social workers. These topic ideas concentrate on addressing some problems that caseworkers go through both in their lives and their field. Research topics for social work may vary. However, like any other research paper, writing social work research topics deals with application of related theories and concepts, as well as understanding the entire casework aspects. The research involves applying cause and effect, analytic, survey, and experimental procedures to find ways to address welfare challenges. The purpose of welfare work study is to understand the efficiency of various interventions used to address challenges people develop due to welfare deprivation.

Characteristics of Good Social Work Topics

As an individual seeking to conduct research in welfare work areas, you need to know some of the features that make social work topics to be of great value. Below are characteristics that will make topics for social work research incredible.

• A good topic covers modern trends and incorporates the ideas in the social field.
• The topic should break specific stereotypes using reasonable evidence.
• It must also be supported by various studies that are peer-reviewed.
• Topic chosen must be related to practices in the welfare field.

How to Choose a Social Work Topic?

A plan to decide on excellent social work topics to research starts with a general orientation into social work field. Here are some steps involved when choosing a social work research topic.

• Pick a sector with research potential or simply the one you like.
• Start with “why” and “what” questions and expand on them.
• Read data on faculty’s research interests.
• Read a proper research paper that find interesting and focus on literature review and background sections to gain insight into various issues.
• Identify and browse journals that relate to your likes.
• Lastly, you can look online for research topics that are ready and skim through them to gain new knowledge.

Once you pick a topic, don’t hesitate to contact our proficient research paper writers . Our experts are adept in many fields and can complete a research paper on any topic.

Social Work Research Topics List

Social work research topics cover various concepts and challenges related to caseworkers and their fields of practice. Below are comprehensive research topics in social work that are compelling to explore.

• Parenting and how it is affected by drug abuse.
• Hardship and benefits of teenage adoption.
• Dealing with suicidal thoughts.
• Societal view on mental sickness stigma.
• Adverse impact of displacement on street kids.
• Homelessness and associated psychological effects.
• Managing PTSD among veterans.
• Adolescents and associated clinical depression.
• How group therapy helps to better the lives of foster residents.
• Family role in reducing or increasing depression.
• Effectiveness of anti-depressants.
• Impact of death on wellbeing of a family.
• Effects of divorce on lifestyle and health of children.
• Ways to address military troops' suicidal tendencies.
• Causes of suicidal thoughts in society.
• Impact of disability on lives of parents.
• Ways to address stigma associated with disability.
• Children with autism are socially excluded.
• Impacts of bullying on children’s wellbeing.
• Complexities around child labor.
• Debate for and against abortion.
• Maltreatment of children in foster care.
• Change in societal reaction to HIV/AIDS in the 1990s and now.
• Rape and its psychological impact on the victim.
• Ways to reduce human trafficking.

Unique Topics in Social Work

There are scholarly research topics in social work that draw extra attention from readers since they are unique in nature. Such topics often concentrate on issues neglected in society. Below are unique topics for social work research.

• Is wellbeing therapy sustainable?
• Teenage girls’ menstrual experiences in foster homes for the first time.
• Poverty and how it impedes growth in the American Deep South.
• Negative impact of conversion therapy on LGBTQ society.
• Influence of inclusive healthcare system on ensuring good welfare lives of people.
• Interracial marriages and their associated problems.
• Effects of diversity on children with disabilities.
• Effects of physical abuse on spousal intimacy.
• Pornography as a primary contributor of incest in families.
• Increase in violence against children and women.
• Activism role based on culture in Native Americans ’ lives.
• Sexual addiction of women to men.
• Disparity in health services for immigrants.
• Challenges experienced by people diagnosed with fibromyalgia.
• Living with a spouse with memory problem.
• Power issue in divorce mediation.
• Issues related to having many partners.
• Reintegration of those who survive substance abuse into the society.
• Employment initiatives for women.
• Dynamic systems applied to nations in war situations.
• Transracial adoption and identity issue.
• The hidden trauma in young counselors.
• Ensuring access to medical services in villages.
• Lowering the gender pay gap.
• Reducing racism and antisemitism.

Controversial Topics in Social Work

Presently, there are several controversial issues in social work that may give rise to social research topics. Listed below are some controversial social work research topics.

• Societal reaction to euthanasia.
• Myths on adolescents’ substance abuse.
• Societal groups that are most vulnerable to substance abuse.
• Ways to deal with drug abuse in orphanages.
• Ethical issues associated with human trafficking.
• Family support role in reducing recidivism.
• How imprisonment affects mental health.
• Gender difference when dealing with imprisoned individuals.
• Juvenile delinquents and reeducation strategies.
• Whose role is it to develop resilience in social work?
• What are strategies to build resilience among welfare workers?
• Benefits associated with social health education among incarcerated women.
• How unreported cases of abuse propagate violence.
• Does constructivist therapy offer anything new to social work?
• Should caseworkers support hypnosis use?
• Who is responsible for misdiagnosis?
• How does misdiagnosis affect lives of mentally ill individuals?
• Health benefits associated with hypnosis on an individual.
• Should parents be involved in preventing dyslexia?
• Ways to address panic for both adults and adolescents.
• Challenges faced by the LGBTQ community.
• Do traffickers suffer psychological consequences of human trafficking?
• Welfare workers’ roles in civil wars.
• Various strategies to help anti-social students.
• Was confinement sanctioning by the court a good move?

Interesting Social Work Research Questions

Before you start your research, it is essential to develop a social work research question that guides the type of information you will gather. Some of the social work research questions examples that talk about various interesting social work topics are listed below.

• How can the US solve the rise in obesity cases?
• How does taking student loans impact them psychologically?
• How can America curb increasing addiction cases?
• How do we help adults with learning disabilities?
• How can we improve lives of pregnant incarcerated mothers?
• What is America’s racial disparity prevalence?
• How can PTSD patients receive support?
• Does poverty have psychological effects on children?
• What are workplace violence indicators?
• What are strategies to ensure work-family balance?
• What does society believe about divorce and its impact on children?
• Do you think substance abuse can be regulated?
• What are consequences of living with HIV/AIDS?
• Do you feel traumatized living with dyslexia?
• What are causes of bipolar disorder?
• How does society treat those with bipolar disorders?
• Who is more vulnerable to divorce?
• Does the US criminal justice system play its role in reducing juvenile delinquency?
• What are problems minority kids face at their foster homes?
• Does substance misuse lead to alcoholism?
• Role of police brutality in increasing transformative change?
• What is the appropriate strategy to help patients with bipolar?
• How can we avoid re-incarceration?
• What does religion say about LGBTQ community?
• How does ADHD affect children in foster homes?

>> Read more: Criminal Justice Research Paper Topics

Hot Topics in Social Work

There are various topics in social work that a researcher can explore to address current hot issues such as COVID-19 pandemic. These topics are important since they help determine current and future solutions to an issue. Here are some social work issues topics that you can consider.

• What are effects of Russian-Ukraine war on society?
• Impact of COVID-19 on welfare workers’ psychological health.
• Issues that arise in households with adopted children.
• Social workers’ attitude towards older people.
• Importance of religion in reducing stereotypes.
• How building emotional intelligence helps caseworkers.
• Demands that residents in a foster facility make.
• Challenges single parents experience.
• Support strategies for single parents.
• Strategies to help sexually exploited children.
• Factors leading to homelessness in the US.
• Forms of abuse elders experience from young people.
• Media role in shaping antisemitism stereotypes.
• Approaches to working with elderly people who are cognitively impaired.
• Parental role in shaping sexual orientation of their children.
• When should a child be removed from a setting?
• Child neglect and its effects on victim’s academic performance.
• Psychological effects of children watching domestic violence.
• Grief and its associated symptoms.
• Methods for assisting kids who have seen domestic violence.
• Ways to encourage domestic violence reporting.
• Technology and addiction treatment.
• Suicide prevention protocol in different localities.
• Risk factors associated with secondary traumatic stress.
• Ways to increase cancer screening rates.

Human Services Research Topics

Human services topics are important since they deal with human existence and ways to make it better. Human service topics focus on how social workers help to satisfy individuals’ and communities’ needs. Generally, social workers’ primary aim is to ensure people live in the most comfortable way possible. Some of the human service research topics are indicated below.

• Adverse impact of unemployment.
• Ways to deal with anxiety and depression among small children.
• Reducing number of incarcerated individuals.
• Impact of juvenile delinquency in the US.
• Relevant ways to breed love in foster care.
• Integration of dyslexic people into society.
• Government intervention to enhance welfare conditions.
• Importance of food banks for the US citizens.
• High school bullying prevalence and impacts.
• Factors leading to family violence.
• Impact of homophobia on LGBTQ+ community.
• Drawbacks of the US correctional system.
• Effects of mental illness misdiagnosis.
• The move to invalidate bullying in high schools.
• Causes of panicking in kids.
• Interventions to reduce unemployment rates in the US.
• Strategies to show concern for individuals from communities with low income.
• Challenges of homophobia in the UAE.
• Social workers in reducing child abuse cases.
• Strategies to enhance resilience among welfare workers.
• The need for psychological therapy among welfare workers.
• Important household policies that can reduce domestic violence.
• Shortcomings of America’s carceral system.
• Interventions for children raised in abusive homes.
• Ways to improve learning experience for disabled children.

Best Social Work Research Topics Ideas

Social work plays a huge role in our daily lives. Therefore, exploring research topics ideas for social work will help us to understand welfare workers’ role in making our lives better. This section discusses various social work topics for research papers. It is categorized into subsections, starting with research paper topics, thesis topics, and dissertation topics. Here, you will also find social work capstone ideas, topics for discussion, essay, and presentation topics. Details for each subsection are provided below.

Social Work Research Paper Topics

As an individual in social work field, you will write several research papers and essays. Social work paper topics you can cover depend on your interests, trends, or any other factor. Some interesting topics related to social work you can consider include the following.

• Social workers' perspectives on elderly.
• Causes of people's unwillingness to take advantage of mental health care services.
• Problems that foster children face that prevent them from completing their college degrees.
• Welfare workers’ role in drug abuse prevention.
• The significance of cultural awareness in casework.
• Facilitation of prenatal and postpartum care for surrogate moms.
• Assessing how PTSD affects psychological wellbeing.
• Adoptive families face unique difficulties and concerns.
• Benefits of play therapy interventions for school counseling.
• Hemodialysis patients' mental health and the methods used to help them.
• Importance of leisure pursuits for Alzheimer's patients.
• Damages of psychological violence.
• Trauma and adolescent transition among LGBTQ+ kids.
• Understanding the neglect-syndrome of foster kids.
• Understanding trauma for caseworkers.
• Foster parenting's advantages.
• Role of foster parents in violence prevention.
• Domestic violence and its impacts.
• Foster homes’ role in creating a safe space.
• How diversity helps in social works sector.

Social Work Thesis Topics

There are several thesis topics in social work to research during your master’s program or PhD, which can vary depending on your interest or occupation. Below are some of the social work literature review topics that you can look into.

• Effectiveness of group therapy for alcoholics.
• Mental health services’ effectiveness for pedophilia survivors.
• Inaccessibility of mental health care for members of underrepresented groups due to language barriers.
• Prepartum depression and connection to expecting mothers.
• Relationship between codependency and emotional unavailability.
• Strategies to handle fatigue among welfare workers.
• Burnout causes among social workers.
• Challenges associated with child birth and labor.
• Depression and the perception of welfare mothers.
• Prevalence of mental health in the US.
• The use of an integrated system in various foster homes within America.
• Nurses’ commitment level and how it is associated with health outcomes.
• Impact of legalizing abortion in some states.
• Comparison between displacement in foster homes and war sites.
• Analyzing displacement and associated challenges.
• How immigrant families benefit from parenthood?
• Issues that visually disabled students face at school.
• Essence of welfare work sector diversity.
• Learning about depression from the welfare mom's viewpoint.
• Ways to improve healthcare system.

Social Work Dissertation Topics

Dissertation is a crucial part of your education life as a social worker. Therefore, dissertation topics in social work have to be properly framed and specific. Here are some of the dissertation topics for social work to consider.

• Coping strategies of men during violence at home.
• Rape and how it affects victim’s psychological development.
• Acceptance rate of addiction by addicts within the US.
• Vulnerable groups and government’s role in improving their lives.
• Justification of gender pay gap in America.
• Addiction to substance abuse and its role in the contemporary world.
• Prevalence of homosexuality in the US.
• Naturalizing human needs as a way to break down taboo and barriers.
• The association between stigma and drug abuse persistence.
• Drug abuse and how music increases its prevalence.
• Rate at which American citizens care for their forefathers.
• Technological role in shaping our sexual preferences.
• Reasons why men and women commit suicide.
• Existing protection policies for children in New York State.
• Investigating US women who have experienced child sexual abuse.
• Assessment of healing strategies for drug abuse survivors.
• The role of parents in supporting their children’s ambitions.
• Volunteering and its impact on self-satisfaction.
• Therapies used to treat effective disorder in an American youth.
• The need for sexual education among young girls with mental health issues.

Social Work Capstone Project Ideas

As a social worker, you should consider some social work project topics for your capstone project . Capstone project social work research topics are highlighted below.

• Impact of domestic violence on marital satisfaction.
• How does government support minority groups?
• Media role in ensuring public safety.
• Causes of child neglect.
• How juvenile crime affects the US.
• How government ensures food security.
• Enhancing public safety in minority communities.
• Problems associated with criminal justice system.
• Social integration of individuals with Down Syndrome.
• Role of school administration in reducing bullying.
• Bullying and victims’ academic performance.
• Trauma experienced by social workers.
• Parenting and its role in children’s sexual orientation.
• What causes panic in schools.
• How child support is essential in divorced couples.
• Child neglect and its causes.
• Damages caused by psychological violence.
• Trauma of adolescent transitioning in LGBTQ+ children.
• Understanding foster kids’ neglect-syndrome.
• Causes of increase in reincarceration among youths in America.

Social Work Topics for Discussion

Highlighted below are some social work discussion topics to consider.

• Root causes of domectic violence.
• Location-specific suicide prevention and crisis protocols.
• How does drug dependence influence parenting?
• Public policies for and against LGBT community.
• Ways of providing support for bipolar patients.
• Prenatal depression in expectant mothers.
• How to cope with imprisonment stigma.
• Ways to improve living standards in foster homes.
• What are the best community service strategies for refugees?
• How can backyard farming be used to empower women?
• Utilizing gender sensitivity to help the LGBT community.
• Cultural importance of generation gap.
• Secondary traumatic stress: symptoms, risk factors & ways of managing.
• How to motivate women to report family violence.
• Various ways in which unemployment influences immigrants.
• How peer service providers confront reproductive health issues.
• The major problems faced by welfare workers.
• Detrimental influence of alcohol and drug on adolescents.
• Effectiveness of the prohibition of liquor.
• Key reasons for heightened crime rates in modern society.

Social Work Essay Topics

Here are some of social work topics for essays that you should consider in your writing.

• Global challenges faced by deported women.
• Street hawking opportunities for teenagers.
• Main factors that lead to incest.
• Positive and negative effects of health care reforms.
• How environmental welfare work is undertaken.
• Care strategies for immigrants.
• Impact of corporate social responsibility on community wellbeing.
• Does welfare scheme affect worker’s performance?
• The impact of sexual violence on adolescent girls.
• How does diversity affect various communities?
• Effect of play therapy interventions in school counseling.
• Influence of poverty on children’s development and education.
• How should welfare workers deal with pedophilia victims?
• How should caseworkers prevent burnout?
• How to establish a high school service-learning program.
• Elder abuse: most prevalent forms.
• The central issues associated with special education.
• Personal perspective on the obstacles faced by vulnerable populations in search medical help.
• What is the greatest risk of fetal alcohol exposure?
• Ways to enhance caseworkers’ mental health.

Social Work Topics for Presentation

Presentation social work topics for research discuss different aspects of the field of social work. The research topics have to be practical for them to be presented well. Below are some good research topics for social work presentation.

• Strategies to ensure equality during job recruitment.
• Autism and its risk factors.
• Causes of depression in kids.
• What are risk factors of PTSD among victims?
• Ways to reduce suicide cases in society.
• Advantages and disadvantages of rehabilitation centers.
• Community initiatives to cater for the elders.
• Effects of misdiagnosis of mental illness.
• Ethics of abortion.
• Importance of early cancer screening.
• Strategies to reduce unemployment rate among minority communities.
• How foster parents can help in countering youth violence.
• Euthanasia and how various religions view it.
• Compare societal preparation to COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS.
• Contemporary ways to substance abuse.
• Eating disorder and its causes.

Research Topics for Social Work Students

College students also apply social work research topics in their study of related subject, which covers various aspects in the field of social work. Here are some of social work research topics for college students.

• Resident’s experience in long-term care facilities.
• Strategies to handle life when both parents suffer from Alzheimer’s.
• Pregnancy experience among immigrants and how they approach it.
• How does death affect the collective wellbeing of the family?
• Enhancing digital literacy among immigrant students.
• How socioeconomic disparity affects the old.
• Social and mental effects of loans on students.
• Social problems that autistic children face.
• Conversion therapy’s negative effects on the LGBTQ+ community.
• Impact of science on cancer treatment.

You will find a lot of topics in different fields on our platform. If you are looking for  topics in laws  or mental health research paper topics , just go to our library and find what you need.

Bottom Line on Social Work Research Topic Ideas

Feel free to choose a topic of your choice from the social work research topics examples recommended above. Apply appropriate topic categories during the process of choosing topics depending on your needs, knowledge in the field, and the type of paper you are writing. Practice using the provided examples will make you perfect.

In case you need a personalized research topic, or require a complete social work research paper, you can buy research paper online from StudyCrumb. Particularly, our writers will help you choose social work research paper topics, write papers for you, and proofread the work to ensure there are no grammatical errors.

Joe Eckel is an expert on Dissertations writing. He makes sure that each student gets precious insights on composing A-grade academic writing.

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Social Work--Masters

• Search Tips for Books
• Browsing the Shelves
• Choosing Keywords
• Creating Search Statements
• Using Databases
• Using Subject Terms
• Interlibrary Loan

Literature Reviews

• Services for Distance Students
• Citing with APA
• Licensure Resources

A literature review is a means of demonstrating an author's knowledge about a particular field of study, including vocabulary, theories, key variables and phenomena, and its methods and history. Conducting a literature review also informs the student of the influential researchers and research groups in the field.

Randolph, Justus J. "A Guide to Writing the Dissertation Literature Review." Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 14.13 (2009): 1-13.

What is a Literature Review?

At the top of this page is a general definition for what a literature review can encompass. Here are some additional criteria for you to consider as you begin to consider research studies to use in the paper that you will write:

• What has been done: this includes methods, populations, when was it studied?
• What are the gaps: what aspects haven't been researched?
• What are you going to do with the information you have found?

When you begin writing your literature review, it should be more than just a summary of what others have done. You need to interact with the research that you find. 

What does this mean for you as a student researcher?

• Don't settle for the quickest and easiest search results that you run across.
• Research the books and journal articles that you use in a deliberate way (this guide will help with that aspect).
• Think critically about the information that you find. What you're doing is much more than just a simple summary of other people's research.
• Be able to justify why you are including a research study in your review. How does it influence the research study you would plan or hope to do?
• Identify potential risks or benefits of the research methods used and how they might have impacted the study.

What is the Purpose of a Literature Review?

• distinguishing what has been done from what needs to be done
• discovering important variable relevant to the topic
• synthesizing and gaining a new perspective
• identifying relationships between ideas and practices
• establishing the context of the topic or problem
• rationalizing the significance of the problem
• enhancing and acquiring the subject vocabulary
• understanding the structure of the subject
• relating ideas and theory to application
• identifying the main methodologies and research techniques that have been used
• placing the research in a historical context to show familiarity with state-of-the art developments

Hart, Chris. Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. London: Sage Publications, 1998, p.27.

What is Peer-Review?

Peer-reviewed journals and articles are a way of communicating ideas and information within a specific field of study or academic discipline.

Key features:

• use specialized vocabulary
• written by scholars and experts for other scholars and experts
• assumes that readers have basic knowledge of subject area
• they serve to advance knowledge by introducing new ideas and points of view while remaining in the known field of study
• evaluate the quality of manuscript
• validate the accuracy of the research methodology and procedures
•  it may also have been revised under advisement of the peer reviewers
• articles that don’t meet the standards set by a journal or association are not published

Identifying Peer-Review Articles & Research Studies

A research article is a scholarly article that essentially reports the results of original, primary research and typically appears in peer-reviewed or refereed periodicals. For this reason, research articles are considered the pinnacle of information sources. Research articles are almost always written in the same format. Understanding the format of research articles should help you to more easily navigate databases and select appropriate sources for you to use for your research. Most research articles incorporate five standard elements. The format that research articles follow mirror the research process.

• Introduction : summarizes the problem researched, its significance, and the nature of the study
• Literature review : provides a framework for understanding the problem and the theoretical rationale behind conducting the study; sources cited are typically listed at the end in some sort of reference page
• Methodology : describes how the data were collected, including things like the population studies and the data collection instrument used
• Results/findings : presents a summary of the data collected, typically in the form of charts and tables with accompanying narrative
• Discussion/conclusion : includes such information as the interpretation of the data, recommendations for further study, and limitations of the study.

Other elements that you many find in research articles are an abstract or summary, information about the author(s), and a list of references. The references can be very helpful in directing your to other possible sources of information.

"The student's survival guide to research," M.L. McAdoo, p. 123-4.

Books About Literature Reviews and Thesis Writing

• Worksheet for Literature Reviews This worksheet will aid in creating a summary for the research articles you read. Use the matrices to determine if it meets your criteria.

Source: McLean, Lindsey. "Literature Review."  CORA (Community of Online Research Assignments) , 2015.  https://www.projectcora.org/assignment/literature-review.

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233 Social Work Research Topics: Helpful List For Students

Social work research topics deal with many things. They look into some of the problem generating areas within the social works field and the use of research methodology to understand these problems. They also try to sort these problems out and address some of the challenges encountered both in the lives of social workers and their primary field of practice.

Like every other research writing, writing a social work research topic requires the carrying out of in-depth research finding on the subject which requires the application of theories, the use of concepts, understanding the basic and advanced principles of social works, observing the intricacies within the field of study, finding ways to address these social issues through the use of experimental, survey, analytic, cause and effect researching procedure.

To craft an intriguing and compelling essay topic on social works, all of the aforementioned will need to be present as they help you not just in the topic formulation process but also in the research writing. Every research writing follows a particular style and writing on social works partakes in this process. Here are some social work-related research topics to put into consideration.

Social Work Research Topics

Social work as a field of work and field of study deals primarily with practicality. Even though the understanding of some of its underlying principles requires first the use and application of theories, social workers deal with practical applications daily. Writing a research topic on this field, therefore, requires that each topic will have undertones of practicality woven within it.

This is necessary as the primary goal of both social work research writing and the field itself is in carrying out investigations and the understanding of various issues that impact the lives of individuals and how they could be addressed. Research social worker research topics on it can look like.

• The importance of group therapy for children in foster homes
• Impacts of clinical depression on teenage girls
• Lack of child support and its impact on child care in America
• A look into depression and the stigma associated with it.
• ADHD within foster homes and its impacts on children
• The impacts of constant mobility in the lives of orphaned toddlers
• Addressing the inherent PTSD in the lives of medical veterans
• The social relegation of Autism children
• Addressing the stigma surrounding disability
• Disability and how it affects the lives of middle-aged parents
• The recurring case of displacement and its violent effects on street children
• How homelessness impacts people psyche
• Misdiagnosed mental illness and its negative impacts on people
• Suicidal tendencies within military units and possible ways to address them.
• The need for the social interrogation of mental illness stigma
• Parents living with Bipolar and how it impacts their parenting and children’s lives
• How early childhood displacement amounts to antisocial lifestyle in foster children
• Adoption of teenagers: the struggles and joys associated within
• A look into the undisclosed cases of rape violence amongst women in the military and how it impacts their lives and service
• Substance abuse and how it affects parenting
• Understanding the trauma associated with child-parent separation
• How divorce positively impacts the health and lifestyle of children
• A close analysis of the myths associated with Welfare mothers
• Addressing the issue of substance abuse amongst teenagers
• Death and how it impacts the collective well-being of the family
• A study into family support as a viable way for alcohol recovery
• Alcoholism and its impacts on a person’s psyche
• How sponsors positively impact the lives of recovering addicts
• A clinical study of anti-depressants and their current effectiveness
• The breeding of social exclusion of children with Down syndrome
• Why social and academic integration is important for children with Down syndrome
• Depression and how family exacerbates it
• Alcoholism: it impacts on social, family, and personal lifestyle
• An analysis of the difference and similarities between Dyslexia and ADHD
• Creating awareness for Dyslexic patients

Social Work Research Questions

Social works as a field of study fall within the social sciences, as a result of this the field of study deals with the use of questioning as an approach to arrive at a conclusive and reflective answer (empirical evidence). This is why research in this field deals with data collection, data analysis, experimentations, investigation, etc. The research questions asked when researching within social works are important as it’s through it that informative research is carried out and meanings derived through it. Here are some social work research questions.

• How does trauma inform the education of children in foster homes?
• The protest of police brutality, does it have the potential of promoting transformative change?
• Why does society insist that divorce impacts the psyche of all children negatively
• Is informed trauma in foster homes the primary cause of children disappearing from foster homes?
• Does the implementation of learning curriculums that positively impacts Dyslexic students improve their academics?
• Is trauma-informed learning reflective of parenting?
• Do house and food insecurity impact the lives of foster children for life?
• How does community violence have effects on the lives LGBT+ community?
• What are the ways the criminal justice system is failing America’s social lifestyle?
• What are the signs of identifying workplace trauma
• Workplace violence: how can it be addressed?
• How do poverty and scarcity affect the psychology of young children?
• What are the ways through which the American healthcare system is failing minority groups
• What are the ways the misuse of substances breeds addictive behaviors?
• How to point out the early signs of depression in teenagers?
• Who is at greater risk of child-parent separation?
• What are the consequences of living with Dyslexia?
• Why is depression diagnosed as a mental disorder?
• What are the defining differences between Bipolar I and Bipolar II?
• How can bipolar patients receive support?
• What percentage of incarcerated adults is from minority groups?
• What are the results of racial disparity in America?
• How does America’s racial disparity manifest in the healthcare system?
• What are the challenges experienced by minority kids in foster homes?
• How can the American government support welfare parents more?
• How can addiction be controlled?
• How does alcohol abuse affect college students’ academic performance?
• What are the ways community reentry proves challenging for formerly incarcerated people?
• What are the physical, emotional, and psychological effects of pregnant incarcerated mothers?
• How can cases within addiction be curbed in America?
• What are the ways to approach America’s carceral system?
• What are the ways nursing homes can be better equipped for old folks?
• What are the social and psychological impacts of student loans?
• How can assistance be extended to adults with learning disabilities?
• How can America’s rise in obesity be addressed?

Human Services Research Paper Topics

Human services research papers also fall within the social work research topics ideas to look into. This area of social works essay topics deal with issues which are primarily related to human service, how it’s being impacted, and ways to understand and address some of its challenges. Human services research paper topics that fall within it include.

• How America’s carceral system affects low-income and minority homes majorly.
• Social integration of Down syndrome and Dyslexic people
• How the government can improve welfare conditions
• The negative psychological impacts of food banks
• How food banks benefit the lives of many Americans.
• How home violence affects children
• Understanding the effects of high school bullying
• Welfare workers and why they need therapy and support groups
• How to build love in foster care
• The practice of resilience amongst social workers
• The effects of juvenile delinquency in America
• Understanding America’s carceral shortcomings
• Minority groups at the expense of America’s carceral system
• Addressing the issue of homophobia in America
• Homophobia and how it impacts LGBTQ+ adults
• Factors contributing to family violence
• Spousal violence and how to address it
• Family cruelty and how it impacts lives
• Undiagnosed cases of Bipolar and its effects
• Misdiagnosed mental illness and its effects
• Improving support systems for LGBTQ+ kids
• Home insecurity and how it impacts the homeless
• Bridging the disparity of formerly incarcerated people
• Understanding gender inequality when dealing with incarcerated people
• The failure of America’s correctional system
• Incarceration: Reformed or abolished?
• Police system: Reformed, defunded, or abolished?
• Factors contributing to increase in youth depression
• Unemployment and its effects on people
• Similarities between juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration
• Psychological impacts of child trafficking
• Human trafficking and its psychological effects on victims
• Addressing depression, anxiety, and panic in little children

Interesting Social Work Topics

Within the field of social works, there are some topics and issues that draw extra attention due to their uniqueness. These topics often make for interesting research topics as they often draw on several relevant but often neglected issues or topics that are not paid due attention to. There are so many interesting social work topics that talk within this category and some of them include.

• Understanding the experiences of women living within shelter homes
• The racial disparity prevalent in America’s food bank system
• A study and understanding of the stigma and social relegations welfare mothers are subjected to.
• The challenges of living with both parents suffering from Alzheimer’s
• A sociological and environmental outlook into the academic transition from high school to college and how it manifests in the lives of students.
• An analysis of the client-therapist relationship of psychiatric therapists
• An evaluation of the sociological impact of including sex education in the high school curriculum
• An in-depth analysis of the emotional and psychological effects of induced child labor
• Psychological, emotional, and physical effects of abusive parenting
• Verbal and physical abuse in families and how it manifests in the lives of children
• How emotional and psychological abuse encourages low self-esteem
• A study of children raised in abusive homes
• How physical abuse affects spousal intimacy
• A critical study of the learning challenges of disabled children
• How inclusivity in the social system will impact disabled children
• Why there’s the need to encourage more flexible social structures for disabled people
• A case study of the inherent challenges of interracial marriages
• A case of study of how a functional and inclusive healthcare system improve social growth
• How conversion therapy negatively impacts the LGBTQ+ community
• How religion impacts social workers interaction with social issues
• A study of the prevalence of poverty in the American Deep South and the ways it impedes growth
• Sustainability of wellness therapy
• An in-depth analysis of how first-time menstrual experiences impacts teenage girls in foster homes
• The relationship between teenagers, school, and the general society
• The negative impacts of birth control laws
• How abortion bans are leading to more psychological issues
• How the increases in the cost of housing in America is affecting young millennials
• How low paid labor propagates workplace abuse
• The impacts of gender roles and cultural beliefs in marriages
• Why America needs more rehabilitation centers than carceral systems
• The relationship between welfare systems and low-income neighborhoods
• How teenage pregnancy impacts teenage mothers
• The growing effect and pressure of social media in the lives of teenage children

Controversial Topics in Social Work

Social worker’s research topics also look into areas within the field of study that are often regarded as controversial. These topics are referred to as so due to their nature of occurrence which usually has provoked significant public interest. When writing on controversial topics in social work in this field, here are some of the topics that fall well within this category.

• Rising cases of drug abuse in low-income neighborhoods
• How incarceration negatively impacts the psychological well-being of incarcerated people
• The dangers of confinement and why it should be looked into
• Drug vulnerability and how to help addicts
• Cognitive-behavioral therapy and how it enables social workers to relate more to their environment and situations
• Hypnosis and its health benefits on an individual
• Therapy for the less represented groups and why it’s important
• A clear distinction between clinical depression and undiagnosed depression
• Misdiagnosis: how it’s affecting the lives of mentally challenged people
• Understanding ADHD and the stigmas associated with it
• An investigative study into the use of cognitive-behavioral therapy to improve the livelihood of incarcerated people
• Understanding adolescents development about kids in foster cares
• The social effects of living within an immigrant home in America
• Social workers remuneration and how it impacts their dedication and diligence to their work
• The negative impact of child-parent legally signed separation and ways through which it can be contained
• A qualitative study of dealing with Dyslexia as an adolescent
• Catering safe spaces for minority groups and the impacts of community on their mental health.
• Child poverty, food insecurity, house insecurity: how they impact the academic abilities of children
• Examining the use of empathy to facilitate the improvement of the social work sector
• Why there needs to be more qualitative examining of foster homes for child safety and peace
• The positive impacts within the foster home system and why it should be championed
• Understanding sexual health education for incarcerated women
• Addressing violence as a social problem within the correctional system
• Court sanctioned confinement, how it promotes mental illness rather than facilitate correction
• The hidden and unnoticed trauma prevalent in counselors and therapists
• The continuous cycle of therapy: why therapists need therapy
• The need to facilitate awareness on the stigma associated with AIDS
• The social and health implication of abortion ban on women in low-income neighborhoods
• The psychological, health, and social implications of abortion ban on rape survivors
• The unreported cases of abuse in homes and how it propagates violence
• Trafficking: the impacts of it on the social well-being of a society
• Exploring the challenges of the hurricanes in low-income neighborhoods
• The hidden trauma of hurricane and flood survivors

Social Work Thesis Topics

As a field of study on its own, social work will require you to write series of papers, research assignments and essays on a select topic of your choice. This is also compulsory if you are doing your master’s program or your Ph.D. You’ll be required to carry out evaluative or qualitative research on your area of interest. Some interesting social work essay topics to consider include the following ones.

• The psychological impacts of adult children of emotionally immature parents
• The treatment plan for diagnosed drug addiction
• Navigating the challenges of visually impaired learners in the academia
• Evaluating child abuse in foster care
• The emotional effect of transitioning into nursing homes
• A study of parenthood in immigrant families
• The psychological weight of child abuse
• Understanding child labor and its intricacies
• Encouraging cognitive-behavioral therapy for foster parents
• Trauma: Understanding the challenges of the foster kid
• Abortion illegality as the increasing cause of teenage pregnancy
• Understanding displacement and its nuances
• The distinction between the displacement of children in war areas and children in foster homes
• The psychological impacts of growing within a war zone
• The barrier to working faced by formerly incarcerated people
• Juvenile delinquency: how it harms rather than benefits children
• Examining the American rehabilitation system
• Examining the gender disparity in correctional facilities
• The use of empathy: social workers in the discharge of duty
• How to address compassion fatigue amongst counselors and social workers
• The effects of structural racism on the welfare systems
• Understanding depression from the welfare mom’s perspective
• Myths associated with ADHD
• Integrating compassion in social works
• Building an inclusive system for foster kids
• The disability challenges in the healthcare system
• Disability disparity in the social works department
• Future attachment styles in foster kids
• Codependency: a feature of displacement
• Home emotional unavailability as the rising cause for codependency
• Understanding interdependency for the codependent
• Distinctions between codependency and interdependency in youth adults
• Prepatrum depression in expecting mothers

Social Work Topics for Presentation

One of the social work project ideas to look into while writing your paper is the possibility of including a presentation. As a practical field, social works research requires some level of presentation included. Here are some social work topics for presentation.

• The historical development of social works
• Importance of social works in school
• Importance of therapy for teenagers
• An exploration of challenges faced in forensic social works
• Understanding the struggles of minority groups
• A study of abuse in middle-class homes
• Importance of finance in sustaining social works
• The overall effect of compassion fatigue
• Challenges of modern-day social works
• Psychological impacts of child drug abuse
• Importance of inclusivity in social works
• Understanding same-sex relationships for the social worker
• Importance of drug sensitization in high school
• The abuse of drugs in low-income neighborhoods as an economic factor
• Depression stereotypes
• Effects and impacts of spirituality as a social works technique
• Damages of psychological violence
• Domestic violence and its impacts
• Role of social workers in the prevention of drug abuse
• Role or foster parents in the prevention of violence
• Role of foster homes in creating a safe space
• Positive impacts of foster parenting
• Understanding trauma for the social worker
• Importance of diversity in the social works sector
• Understanding the neglect-syndrome of foster kids
• Adolescent transitioning and trauma of LGBTQ+ children
• Trauma and juvenile delinquency
• Juvenile delinquency and adult incarceration
• Importance of free healthcare for foster children and children in low-income neighborhoods
• A study of sexually violated children
• Understanding the impacts of incest in homes
• The victim syndrome and how to better understand it
• Understanding Stockholm syndrome

We have provided above a list of interesting social work topics that social science students, whether they are college students or master’s students, can choose from. But if you are hoping to meet up with your college or university essay deadlines, there are professional ENL US writers, including some of the best professors for hire online. They can assist you with fast and top-notch essays that will get you high grades all at a cheap rate. You will be provided with custom, amazing assignments that will attain you high grades.

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• Boston University Libraries

Literature Reviews in Social Work

About this guide.

• What is a Literature Review
• Types of Literature Reviews
• Guidelines for Writing a Literature Review
• Searching for Books, Articles, and Other Resources
• Associations and Research Institutes
• Statistical Sources
• Government Resources
• Citing Your Sources

The purpose of this guide is to provide background and guidelines related to literature reviews in social work. Included are BU databases useful for social work research, search tips, and a listing of some associations and research institutes that produce research reports or provide links to research literature that might be useful in a review. The correct citation of sources is particularly important in a literature review and this guide includes a listing of the various style manuals, including APA and the Chicago Manual of Style. (Original author, Meredith Kirkpatrick, 2021)

Related Guides

• Social Work
• Social Work Policy Resources
• Systematic Reviews in the Social Sciences
• Next: What is a Literature Review >>
• Last Updated: Dec 11, 2023 11:17 AM
• URL: https://library.bu.edu/literaturereviews

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3.2 Synthesizing literature

Learning objectives.

• Connect the sources you read with key concepts in your research question and proposal
• Systematize the information and facts from each source you read

Putting the pieces together

Combining separate elements into a whole is the dictionary definition of synthesis. It is a way to make connections among and between numerous and varied source materials. A literature review is not an annotated bibliography, organized by title, author, or date of publication. Rather, it is grouped by topic and argument to create a whole view of the literature relevant to your research question.

Your synthesis must demonstrate a critical analysis of the papers you collected, as well as your ability to integrate the results of your analysis into your own literature review. Each source you collect should be critically evaluated and weighed based on the criteria from Chapter 2 before you include it in your review.

Begin the synthesis process by creating a grid, table, or an outline where you will summarize your literature review findings, using common themes you have identified and the sources you have found. The summary, grid, or outline will help you compare and contrast the themes, so you can see the relationships among them as well as areas where you may need to do more searching. A basic summary table is provided in Figure 3.2. Whichever method you choose, this type of organization will help you to both understand the information you find and structure the writing of your review. Remember, although “the means of summarizing can vary, the key at this point is to make sure you understand what you’ve found and how it relates to your topic and research question” (Bennard et al., 2014, para. 10).

As you read through the material you gather, look for common themes as they may provide the structure for your literature review. And, remember, writing a literature review is an iterative process. It is not unusual to go back and search academic databases for more sources of information as you read the articles you’ve collected.

Literature reviews can be organized sequentially or by topic, theme, method, results, theory, or argument. It’s important to develop categories that are meaningful and relevant to your research question. Take detailed notes on each article and use a consistent format for capturing all the information each article provides. These notes and the summary table can be done manually using note cards. However, given the amount of information you will be recording, an electronic file created in a word processing or spreadsheet (like this example Literature Search Template ) is more manageable. Examples of fields you may want to capture in your notes include:

• Authors’ names
• Article title
• Publication year
• Main purpose of the article
• Methodology or research design
• Participants
• Measurement
• Conclusions

Other fields that will be useful when you begin to synthesize the sum total of your research:

• Specific details of the article or research that are especially relevant to your study
• Key terms and definitions
• Strengths or weaknesses in research design
• Relationships to other studies
• Possible gaps in the research or literature (for example, many research articles conclude with the statement “more research is needed in this area”)
• Finally, note how closely each article relates to your topic. You may want to rank these as high, medium, or low relevance. For papers that you decide not to include, you may want to note your reasoning for exclusion, such as small sample size, local case study, or lacks evidence to support conclusions.

An example of how to organize summary tables by author or theme is shown in Table 3.1.

Here is an example summary table template .

Creating a topical outline

An alternative way to organize your articles for synthesis it to create an outline. After you have collected the articles you intend to use (and have put aside the ones you won’t be using), it’s time to extract as much as possible from the facts provided in those articles. You are starting your research project without a lot of hard facts on the topics you want to study, and by using the literature reviews provided in academic journal articles, you can gain a lot of knowledge about a topic in a short period of time.

As you read an article in detail, try copying the information you find relevant to your research topic in a separate word processing document. Copying and pasting from PDF to Word can be a pain because PDFs are image files not documents. To make that easier, use the HTML version of the article, convert the PDF to Word in Adobe Acrobat or another PDF reader, or use “paste special” command to paste the content into Word without formatting. If it’s an old PDF, you may have to simply type out the information you need. It can be a messy job, but having all of your facts in one place is very helpful for drafting your literature review.  Of course, you will not be using other authors’ words in your own literature review, but this is a good way to start compiling your notes.

You should copy and paste any fact or argument you consider important. Some good examples include definitions of concepts, statistics about the size of the social problem, and empirical evidence about the key variables in the research question, among countless others. It’s a good idea to consult with your professor and the syllabus for the course about what they are looking for when they read your literature review. Facts for your literature review are principally found in the introduction, results, and discussion section of an empirical article or at any point in a non-empirical article. Copy and paste into your notes anything you may want to use in your literature review.

Importantly, you must make sure you note the original source of that information. Nothing is worse than searching your articles for hours only to realize you forgot to note where your facts came from. If you found a statistic that the author used in the introduction, it almost certainly came from another source that the author cited in a footnote or internal citation. You will want to check the original source to make sure the author represented the information correctly. Moreover, you may want to read the original study to learn more about your topic and discover other sources relevant to your inquiry.

Assuming you have pulled all of the facts out of multiple articles, it’s time to start thinking about how these pieces of information relate to each other. Start grouping each fact into categories and subcategories as shown in Figure 3.3. For example, a statistic stating that homeless single adults are more likely to be male may fit into a category of gender and homelessness. For each topic or subtopic you identified during your critical analysis of each paper, determine what those papers have in common. Likewise, determine which ones in the group differ. If there are contradictory findings, you may be able to identify methodological or theoretical differences that could account for the contradiction. For example, one study may sample only high-income earners or those in a rural area. Determine what general conclusions you can report about the topic or subtopic, based on all of the information you’ve found.

Create a separate document containing a topical outline that combines your facts from each source and organizes them by topic or category. As you include more facts and more sources into your topical outline, you will begin to see how each fact fits into a category and how categories are related to each other. Your category names may change over time, as may their definitions. This is a natural reflection of the learning you are doing.

A complete topical outline is a long list of facts, arranged by category about your topic. As you step back from the outline, you should understand the topic areas where you have enough information to make strong conclusions about what the literature says. You should also assess in what areas you need to do more research before you can write a robust literature review. The topical outline should serve as a transitional document between the notes you write on each source and the literature review you submit to your professor. It is important to note that they contain plagiarized information that is copied and pasted directly from the primary sources. That’s okay because these are just notes and are not meant to be turned in as your own ideas. For your final literature review, you must paraphrase these sources to avoid plagiarism. More importantly, you should keep your voice and ideas front-and-center in what you write as this is your analysis of the literature. Make strong claims and support them thoroughly using facts you found in the literature. We will pick up the task of writing your literature review in section 3.3.

Additional resources for synthesizing literature

There are many ways to approach synthesizing literature. We’ve reviewed two examples here: summary tables and topical outlines. Other examples you may encounter include annotated bibliographies and synthesis matrices. As you are learning research, find a method that works for you. Reviewing the literature is a core component of evidence-based practice in social work at any level. See the resources below if you need some additional help:

Literature Reviews: Using a Matrix to Organize Research  / Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota

Literature Review: Synthesizing Multiple Sources  / Indiana University

Writing a Literature Review and Using a Synthesis Matrix  / Florida International University

Sample Literature Reviews Grid  / Complied by Lindsay Roberts

Killam, Laura (2013) . Literature review preparation: Creating a summary table . Includes transcript.

Key Takeaways

• It is necessary to take notes on research articles as you read. Try to develop a system that works for you to keep your notes organized, such as a summary table.
• Summary tables and topical outlines help researchers synthesize sources for the purpose of writing a literature review.

Image attributions

Pieces of the puzzle by congerdesign cc-0, adult diary by pexels cc-0.

• Figure 3.2 copied from Frederiksen, L. & Phelps, S. F. (2018). Literature reviews for education and nursing graduate students. Shared under a CC-BY 4.0 license. ↵
• This table was adapted from the work of Amanda Parsons ↵

Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions Copyright © 2020 by Rebecca Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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