News

By Ian Shaw and Nick Gould.
Sage Publications
£17.99 (paperback)
ISBN 0 7619 6182 8

This book is two books, only one of which - a mini-text on qualitative methods - is by Shaw and Gould. The second is an edited collection of methodological essays - including, from the UK, Jonathan Scourfield on gender and child protection, and Sue White on child care practice. The six short pieces provide excellent material for researchers, illustrating diverse approaches - ethnography, interviewing and narrative analysis.

Qualitative Research in Social Work is self-evidently a good read for researchers - whether apprentice-learners or established operators. It will be a valuable postgraduate teaching tool. Shaw and Gould draw on their long experience to offer accessible accounts of the place of qualitative methods in social work scholarship. More tentatively, they explore the nature of the relationship between research and practice - or "inquiry and action".

The contribution that qualitative methods make to our understanding of the need for justice in practice is acknowledged, but the tension between service user perspectives and those of the beleaguered practitioner is left hanging in the air. Although research has made it quite clear that power is the name of the game in social work, it can never resolve the tension, of course.

Martin Davies is professor of social work, University of East Anglia.