How international is the social work knowledge base?

Abstract

The global community has long been recognized as influencing and being influenced by United States social work education, research, and practice. Schools of social work and social services organizations in many countries as well as the United States have sponsored study trips outside of their borders for students and professionals for decades, activities sometimes referred to as cross-national learning (Askeland & Payne, 2001). Social workers often look to other countries for ideas about how to tackle local problems and to help new client populations. Successful national social policies, particularly from Europe, have been viewed as ripe for imitation in the United States, just as social work interventions initiated in the United States have been adapted elsewhere. Caveats always exist regarding the relevance of applying social work principles from one country to the next, particularly in relation to Western and non-Western countries (Al-Krenawi & Graham, 2001). But has this long-standing and irrefutably sound attempt to learn more about other countries been reflected in the articles published in key U.S. social work journals? The answer, increasingly, is yes. Method To learn to what extent contributors outside of the United States (as designated by their professional affiliation) publish in U.S. journals, seven major social work journals were reviewed for the 24 months leading up to September 11, 2001 (July 1999 through June/July 2001). Those seven journals were then reviewed for the same years one and two decades earlier (June/July 1989 through June/July 1991 and June/July 1979 through June/ July 1981) to see to what extent there had been a change in the past 20 years in the number of articles contributed by authors outside the United States. For this count (1,715 publications), only articles, regardless of length, were considered. Book reviews, letters to the editor, editorials, point and viewpoints discussions, author debates, columns, and nation-specific conference proceedings and reports were excluded. The seven U.S. journals have been used in the past for studies of trends in social work literature (for example, Quam & Austin, 1984; Van Voorhis & Wagner, 2001). The journals are Child Welfare, Families in Society, Health & Social Work, Journal of Social Work Education, Social Service Review, Social Work, and Social Work Research. Two observations are relevant that make a definitive count problematic. First, a few U.S. authors wrote about experiences in other countries. As a result, a more global perspective may be present in the journal than may be counted. Second, and contradicting the first, a few contributors from outside of the United States used U.S. data for their research. Thus, it should not be assumed that a contributor was necessarily writing about issues specific to the author's country of origin. Patel and Sumathipala (2001), two British psychiatrists, reviewed three U.S. and three European psychiatric journals for the years 1996-1998 to learn to what extent authors from non-Western countries were represented in the publications. In their methodology, they considered contributions from Western Europe (not Israel) and the United States as Western. The U.S. journals were much less likely to have contributions from the rest of the world than European journals--non-Western contributors accounted for between 1.3 percent and 2.5 percent in the three U.S. journals, compared with 6.1 percent to 15 percent in the three European journals. Cetingok (1999) reviewed 33 social work journals between 1977 and 1996 for foreign contributions and content. He found that 6.4 percent of the articles were contributed by authors outside of the United States, with Canada, Israel, Australia, and Great Britain the most frequently represented. Overall, foreign contributions more than doubled between 1977 and 1981 and 1992 and 1996. Findings For the most recent years reviewed, 1999-2001, 90. …