When considering what social work and associated research are essentially about, we have seen in the opening chapters that there are different ways of approaching that question. For example, we can think about it in what we may loosely call a philosophical way, by starting with what we believe to be the aims and purposes of social work and then inferring the kinds of research that would enact those purposes. My approach in this chapter is to take almost the very opposite approach, at least as a starting point. Working in an empirical way, I will set out something of what we know about the actual research that takes place. In the first part of the chapter, I will look at what we know about the content of social work research and, in general ways, what we know about the range and kinds of research methods.

Unlike the other chapters, the next few pages are more obviously data-led. Whether they tell us what we ought to be undertaking is a matter for the reader's appraisal in the light of wider considerations. I believe there is need for a corrective rebalancing in social work in relation to the weight we give to normative judgements, although how we describe something and the value we attach to it are never entirely separable. ‘Within the description are clues to quality. A good description cannot but tell of quality’ (Stake and Schwandt, 2006, p 415).

Strangely we know little about the character and content of social work research. More precisely, there have been a number of categorisations offered, too many to list here, but in general they are too rudimentary to be of great value. ‘Mapping’ inevitably requires some degree of simplification and reductionism.