| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar is designed to develop research competence in applied issues of aging. The seminar is primarily designed for pre‐ and post‐doctoral fellows from the NIA project on Social Research Training on Applied Issues of Aging. Other participants are welcome after prior consultation with one of the instructors. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This year-long seminar is designed to develop research competence in applied settings. During the fall term, the seminar will focus on research related to substantive and theoretical issues involved in exploring the relationship between aging and health and health care. This seminar is primarily designed for pre and post-doctoral fellows on the NIA project on Social Research Training on Applied Issues of Aging. Other pre- and post- doctoral participants are welcome after prior consultation with one of the instructors. During the Winter term, each student develops a product using applied research concepts |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or Permission of Instructor |
| Course Description: | These seminars cover variable topics related to faculty and student analysis of critical and emerging issues in research methods for social work policy and practice. These topics may include research strategies, designs, techniques, and skills needed to develop knowledge of human services or research methods relevant to: the advancement of knowledge about practice interventions, the organization of service delivery, and social welfare policies; evaluation of practice, programs, and policies; the formulation and development of innovative practice interventions, service delivery systems, and social welfare policies. |
| Credits: | 1 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar is designed to support doctoral students in the Joint Doctoral Program in Social Work and Social Sciences to develop skills for navigating their doctoral program and prepare for work after graduation. The first objective of the course is an introduction to knowledge and skills that will be useful for engaging with the doctoral program. The second objective is to introduce and share information, resources, and guidance on preparing for life with a doctoral degree. This will include identifying and discussing different career paths, learning about sought after knowledge and skills for different professions, and identifying resources for developing these skills. Participation in a doctoral program is often a demanding and stressful experience and developing strategies to handle the stress and demands faced by many during this period. |
| Credits: | 1 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This Social Work Graduate Workshop is designed to support joint Social Work PhD students in developing, presenting, and receiving feedback on their research and scholarship. Through opportunities to share their work, joint Social Work PhD students will learn ways for tailoring their presentations to a Social Work audience. Joint Social Work PhD students are invited to present their research and scholarship, with work being “in progress” (e.g. not finished/polished) and guiding questions that seek feedback around its Social Work framing or orientation. The Workshop supports and challenges students with work-in-progress, enabling a space for thoughtful and constructive critique from a Social Work audience that represents a wide variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and training. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course focuses on variations in the structure of opportunity and outcomes within the United States and between the United States and other countries. The forms inequality may take and changes over time in conceptions of inequality and inequity will be examined. Attention will be given to: effects of diverse values, perspectives, and ideologies on conceptualizations of social equality and equity; operational definitions of these conceptualizations; the antecedents and consequences of equality/inequality and equity/inequity as variously defined; and the implications of the above for social work and social welfare. Current levels of inequality in the United States will be assessed by critically reviewing the literature on differentials in opportunities and outcome. Comparative analysis of empirical work on inequality within the United States and between the United States and other countries will be used as a basis for examining debates about the relative costs and benefits of particular levels of inequality and about the trade‐off’s between equality and other social goods. Key research issues and gaps in knowledge will be identified. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar covers particular aspects of individual and family well being, social participation, social equity and equality,responses to social trends, or other human conditions that may influence social work and social welfare. The seminar will consider the influences of diverse ideologies and values on conceptualizations of these conditions, operational definitions of the variables considered, an analysis of antecedents and consequences of the conditions, and implications for social work and social welfare of the above. Students will analyze how social units are affected by and respond to current or emerging social trends. Selected trends will provide the substantive theme, addressed with five foci: the trend's nature and antecedents, its consequences for particular social units, social problems/opportunities created by it, responses of various social units to those problems/opportunities, and implications for social work and social welfare in responding to the trend through innovative policies, programs, and treatment methods. Differential effects of the trend on subgroups such as minorities, women and the elderly will be of special interest. Topic selection criteria will include: timeliness, relevance to problems/opportunities of importance to social work/social welfare, and congruence with faculty scholarly work. |
| Credits: | 4 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | First of a two‐part introductory statistics sequence for doctoral students in SW & Social Welfare. Students will learn important theories and concepts behind key statistical methods and their applications to addressing social problems and issues and advancing social justice. Core topics covered in this course will include descriptive statistics, point estimation and confidence interval, central limit theorem and its role in inferential statistics, univariate statistical methods, and analysis of variance methods. Students will learn R statistical software for all analyses and class assignments. |
| Credits: | 4 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | Statistical Methods in Social Sciences II --- This is a foundational course for statistical analyses in social sciences. As the second of a required statistics sequence for doctoral students in Social Work and Social Welfare, students will further advance their understanding of correlation and regression analysis theories, and their applications to addressing social problems and issues and advancing social justice. Core topics covered in this course will include Pearson's correlation (r), other measures of association (e.g., Spearman, Phi coefficient, Point-biserial), simple linear regression, multiple regression, simple mediation and moderation, and be prepared for advanced topics, e.g., multi-level modeling, structural equation modeling, among others. Doctoral and graduate-level students outside of the Social Work and Social Welfare program may be eligible to take this course without taking the first course in the series (SW 850), assuming they have gained the content of SW 850, elsewhere. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing and permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course analyzes the conditions and causes of poverty within the United States and the variety of economic, social, and political responses to it. The first part of the course explores the problems of poverty, including a discussion of various causal theories of poverty and the underlying implications of these theories. The second part of the course analyzes specific problems and policy proposals, with particular attention to the most recent round of legislative reforms since the mid‐1990’s. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | Social workers often wonder “what is mixed methods research?” And “when should I use mixed methods in my own research?” While mixed methods have been around for a long time, they are beginning to gain momentum in social work research. Before decisions can be made about mixed methods, other aspects of the research process must be addressed such as methodological standpoint, the research question, collecting the data, and analyzing and interpreting the data. Mixed methods are more than mixing the methods: it also involves mixing the assumptions that we have about the methodologies, the methods, and the data. In this course, students will be introduced to mixed methods research in the social and behavioral sciences. A primary aspect of the course will be to teach students how to determine if mixed methods are necessary, given their problem statement and research questions. In this course, less attention will be given to the single methods alone, but rather, how they integrate during each stage of the research process for a mixed methods study. The focus of the course is namely how each single method converges during each step of the research process to answer the mixed methods research questions. The course is best suited for students with comfort and familiarity using one or both of the single methods (qualitative or quantitative). By the end of the course, students will be able to: 1. Realize and adopt a philosophical stance and highlight the major theoretical underpinnings of mixed methods research. 2. Identify under what conditions someone should consider conducting a mixed methods study and understand the procedures involved with choosing a mixed methods design. 3. Discuss how to conceptualize and operationalize quantitative and qualitative methods in mixed methods research. 4. Discuss measurement, sampling, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative data for mixed methods research. 5. Describe ways to integrate and interpret qualitative and quantitative data to address a mixed methods research question; 6. Describe ways to disseminate results from mixed methods research. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | Researchers are most commonly aware of methods that are suitable for continuous dependent variables (e.g. mental health scores), such as the use of ordinary least squares regression. However many outcomes of interest to social workers, and other social researchers, are decidedly not continuous, but are dichotomous or binary in nature: entered the program versus did not enter the program; left the program versus stayed in the program; received a particular diagnosis; did not receive a diagnosis. Many researchers are familiar with the basics of logistic regression, yet do not have a grounding in some of the intricacies of logistic regression, such as generating predicted probabilities, or using interaction terms in a categorical model, which can lead to clearer and more accurate reporting of results. Further, the basic logistic regression model serves as the foundation for a wide variety of more advanced statistical approaches that can help advance social work research. Study of the logistic regression model can lead to variations of logistic regression such as logistic regression for ordered variables, or multinomial logistic regression where are more than two categories of the outcome variable (e.g. multiple forms of family violence). An understanding of logistic regression also helps to motivate understanding of models for count data such as the Poisson and negative binomial model suitable for studying counts of events such as incidence of disease or incidence of violence. Lastly, categorical data model serve as the foundation for event history models that are used to study the timing of events, such as the timing of program entry, program departure, or receipt of a diagnosis. Proposed Topics (some topics may span more than 1 week) 1) Review of ordinary least squares regression 2) Logistic and probit models 3) Ordered and multinomial logistic regression models. 4) Models for count data 5) Event history models for the timing of events |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course will build on students’ previous knowledge of multiple linear regression and expanding to allow for correlated and casually related latent variables. Provides the basic theoretical background necessary for the application of Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to research problems including model specification, identification, path analysis, estimation, testing fit, respecification, confirmatory factor analysis and issues concerning the interpretation of SEM results. Advanced topic will be discussed if time permits. The software package Mplus will be the primary analysis tool for this course, and the R software will be used as a complementary. Focus of this course will be on applying SEM to real world research. Understanding of linear regression is assumed for this course. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing and one grad level stats course or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | Longitudinal and Content Multilevel models have become a standard statistical tool for quantitative research on neighborhoods, communities and schools. Perhaps surprisingly, the multilevel model for crosssectional data can easily accommodate longitudinal data where study participants are observed repeatedly. While this is sometimes not recognized, multilevel models for longitudinal data are closely related to other important longitudinal data models, such as fixed effects regression, an important technique for controlling for unobserved variables. This course focuses on the use of multilevel and longitudinal data analysis for social work research. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This is a doctoral-level method course focused on advanced methodologies in research synthesis. Upon completion, students will be able to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis study of publishable quality. The first two weeks of the course will provide a comprehensive introduction to systematic review, including developing a research topic, selecting databases, crafting search keywords, and conducting literature search and data extraction in a rigorous and transparent (replicable) way. The rest of the semester will focus on methodologies of meta-analysis. We will start with calculating standardized mean difference (SMD) as well as converting other statistics into the SMD metric. We will then discuss pooling SMD effect sizes using fixed versus random effects models. Meta-regression analysis will also be introduced to facilitate moderator analyses. Advanced methods to address dependent effects, i.e., multi-level meta-analysis, generalized least squares, and robust variance estimation, will be introduced and practiced during the latter part of the semester. Additional topics including assessing publication bias, meta-analysis of correlations and meta-analyzing categorical effects will be discussed if time permits. The R Software will be used for all analyses in this course. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course is designed as an introductory doctoral seminar to the qualitative research process. We will examine the family of research strategies that fall under the rubric of qualitative inquiry (such as auto-ethnography, ethnography, narrative analysis, text or discourse analysis, visual analysis, case study, grounded theory, oral/life history, focus groups, phenomenology, symbolic interactionism, participatory action research, etc.). Course topics include: the role of qualitative research in social work and applied domains, critical examination of the ontological, epistemological and theoretical underpinnings of qualitative approaches, framing qualitative research questions, positionality and the role of the researcher, ethical and political issues unique to qualitative work, research design (we will select one or two for in-depth coverage), collecting and managing non-numeric empirical evidence, approaches to analysis, computer assisted software, issues in writing up qualitative studies, finding scholarly publication and conference outlets for qualitative work and criteria for assessing the quality of qualitative studies. Student projects will include work with the three primary sources of empirical evidence in qualitative designs: interviews, observations, and documents (or other social artifacts). Throughout the term particular emphasis will be placed on meaning-making, perception, and stand-point in knowledge creation and development. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course will offer an advanced introduction to participatory research methods and methodologies (i.e. community-based participatory research, Photovoice, digital storytelling, participatory action research, participatory evaluation…). The course will invite students to examine the theoretical, technical, and practical elements of doing participatory research, from philosophical underpinnings to research design and analysis strategies to protecting (and engaging) research participants. The course will explore and reflect on issues of power, trust, (in)equity, and social (in)justice; and examine the multiple ways in which participatory research can be used as a vehicle for just social change. Students will learn about different participatory approaches to engage partners in assessing community strengths, priorities and issues in order to develop research questions and methods that can engage community members in each step of the research and evaluation process (to greater and lesser extents). To apply these skills and knowledge, students will work with a defined group of community partners/stakeholders to design and pilot one part of a participatory research project that responds to a community-identified need, is feasible and can produce outcomes that can be utilized to promote, understand or begin to address community partners’ priorities. Through this applied participatory research process, students will better understand challenges, issues and insights that emerge from this form of research, and how they may engage community members in their future research. The course involves a combination of lectures, readings, class discussions and exercises, and student-directed small research projects to facilitate achievement of learning objectives. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | Through doctoral education, students become stewards of the social work profession by developing knowledge and skills that advance the profession’s primary mission, “to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, with particular attention to the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty” (NASW Code of Ethics). Doctoral students advance this mission through excellence in teaching that fosters an inclusive learning environment and incorporates a critical praxis to maintain awareness of oppressive systems. This doctoral-level, social work pedagogy course is designed to prepare students to contribute to the research and teaching missions of future educational institutions. This course will focus on three overarching goals: (1) understanding and applying theories of university teaching, adult learning, and social work education; (2) developing essential teaching knowledge and skills in social work education such as creating learning objectives, syllabi, and grading systems that apply principles of universal design; and (3) recognizing and applying contemporary issues (e.g., technology, hybrid, and inclusive learning environments) to social work education. Through these overarching goals, students will gain knowledge and skills for developing their personal teaching philosophies, course planning and instruction, and situating themselves and their classroom experiences within contemporary educational debates. Students will learn how to foster inclusive classroom environments, facilitate transformational conversations, use principles of universal design, and incorporate a critical praxis into their teaching. While the course content is widely applicable to interdisciplinary teaching, the course will emphasize preparation for teaching in Bachelor’s and Master’s in Social Work degree programs. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | None |
| Course Description: | This seminar is a foundation course for students in the joint Anthropology/Social Work Program. The readings bring together social theory and ethnographic accounts of contemporary social issues. Topics, chosen to illustrate the intersection of the two fields and to bring together faculty from both schools, may include medicine and health, human and civil rights, urban neighborhoods, immigration, race, ethnicity, and gender. Beyond the joint Anthropolgy/Social Work students, the course is expected to attract joint Social Work/social science students from other disciplines, as well as graduate students in anthroplogy, political science, sociology, psychology, economics, and other fields. The course will include events such as guest speakers, works in-progress discussions, reading group, etc. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This course focuses on change, particularly social change, with an emphasis on examining its characterization, explanation and perpetration. The objectives of the course are to deepen and broaden theoretical and empirical understanding of change, and to enhance capacity to pose and address analytic questions about change as well as critically considering the viability of analyses for suggesting policy adjustments or initiatives, or plans of intervention. The objectives will be achieved through readings, class discussions and presentations, and written work. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar provides a foundation and overview for students interested in understanding the intersection between social work and sociology. The readings bring together sociological theory and scholarship as they relate to contemporary social work and social welfare issues. Topics, chose to illustrate the intersection of the two fields and to bring together faculty from both schools, may include poverty, social stratification, and health. Beyond the joint Sociology/Social Work students, the course is expected to attract joint Social Work/social science students from other disciplines, as well as graduate students in economics, public policy, political science, psychology, and other fields. The course will include activities such as guest speakers, works in-progress discussions, readings, and presentations. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar provides a foundation and overview for students interested in understanding the intersection between social work and economics. The readings bring together economic theory and scholarship as they relate to contemporary social work and social welfare issues. Topics, chosen to illustrate the intersection of the two fields and to bring together faculty from both schools, may include poverty, education, and health care. Beyond the joint Eonomics/Social Work students, the course is expected to attract joint Social Work/social science students from other disciplines, as well as graduate students in economics, political science, sociology, psychology, and other fields. The course will include activities such as guest speakers, works in-progress discussions, readings, and presentations. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar provides a foundation and overview for students interested in understanding the intersection between social work and political science. The readings bring together political science theory and scholarship as they relate to contemporary social work and social welfare issues. Topics, chosen to illustrate the intersection of the two fields and to bring together faculty from both schools, may include poverty, social mobilization, and comparative politics. Beyond the joint Political Science/Social Work students, the course is expected to attract joint Social Work/social science students from other disciplines, as well as graduate students in economics, public policy, sociology, psychology, and other fields. The course will include activities such as guest speakers, work in-progress discussions, readings, and presentations. |
| Credits: | 3 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing or permission of instructor |
| Course Description: | This seminar provides a foundation and overview for students interested in understanding the intersection between social work and psychology. The readings bring together psychological theory and scholarship as they relate to contemporary social work and social welfare issues. Topics, chosen to illustrate the intersection of the two fields and to bring together faculty from both schools, may include gerontology, life span development, stereotyping and stigma, and social identity. Beyond the joint Psychology/Social Work students, the course is expected to attract joint Social Work/social science students from other disciplines, as well a graduate students in economics, public policy, sociology, anthropology, and other fields. The course will include activities such as guest speakers, works in-progress discussion, readings, and presentations. |
| Credits: | 1 - 8 |
|---|---|
| Prerequisites: | Doctoral Standing and permission of instructor |
University of Michigan
School of Social Work
1080 South University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1106