Empirical research on social work supervision: The state of the art (1970-1995)

Abstract

This paper is a critical review of all the empirical research on supervision for social workers. Although supervision is taken to be an important and unique enabling social work process, only 30 empirical research articles have been published over the last 25 years. This is a reflection of the wide gap between practice and research on supervision. It has been suggested that there is a pressing need for changes in research topics and research methodology, and for researchers to investigate the impact of culture on supervision and the relationship between supervision and client outcomes. Regarding research methodology, longitudinal research and experiments should be encouraged. Qualitative research methods should also be part of future studies.