The Evidence-Based Social Work Skills Book

During the 21st Century, social workers will increasingly use evidence-based knowledge to plan, implement, and evaluate the quality of their own professional activities. This book explores the skills needed for evidence-based social work (EBSW). This book emphasizes the importance of applied practice, critical thinking, and self-directed lifelong learning. Readers will learn the fundamentals of the EBSW skills, practice them to establish beginning proficiency, and then apply them to a target client group of their choosing. Social workers and anyone interested in practicing evidence-based social work.

The Evidence-Based Social Work Skills Book, First Edition
Barry R. Cournoyer, Indiana University

The EBSW Skills Book helps students develop the skills to plan, implement, and evaluate the quality of their own professional activities and apply EBSW skills to target client groups of their choosing. Dr. Cournoyer emphasizes the importance of applied practice, critical thinking, and self-directed, lifelong learning in this user-friendly, step-by-step skills book.

Highlights of the text:

• Students will learn to search for, discover, critically analyze, and apply evidence of “what works” in service to clients.
• Clear descriptions and examples show students how to evaluate the effectiveness of their own practice and use best practices that are supported by evidence, informed by practical experience, and consistent with clients' personal and cultural values.
• Searching skills also help students learn how to use online library catalogs, bibliographic databases, evidence-based collection, government resources, and www resources.
• Completion of the exercises throughout the book results in a Practice Effectiveness Evidence Report (PEER), a scholarly research paper leading to the identification and description of an evidence-based best practice for service members of a special population affected by a contemporary social problem.

“It The Evidence-Based Social Work Skills Book comprehensively covers the process of conducting a search process. I learned a lot myself about different sources to search.”
-Jacqueline Corcoran, Ph.D., Virginia Commonwealth University

“Dr. Cournoyer is very adept at presenting complex material in a thoughtful manner and I am confident that the text will be well received by social work students and professors.” -Matthew Howard, Ph.D, Washington University in St. Louis

Special Value Pack Option: You can order this text packaged with a FREE Research Navigator( for The Helping Professions guide, which features a free password for access to an array of online sources. This new Pearson Learning product helps students and instructors find credible and reliable material for research assignments and papers.
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