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Schedule:
Saturday, January 23, 2027: 8:00 AM-9:30 AM
Union Station 3 & 4 (Hilton San Francisco Union Square)
Cluster: Social Work Practice
Symposium Organizer:
Samantha Guz, PhD, University of Alabama
Discussant:
Matt Epperson, PhD, University of Chicago
Axiology remains an underexplored area of social work research. Despite a long history of studying marginalized populations, such as people living in poverty and/or people entangled in the legal system, social work research has not fully contended with axiology as a dimension of social science. We define axiology as an explicit focus on values, ethics, and morality in research. Axiology raises questions such as: What is the responsibility of researchers to participants? How can the research process as well as the research findings contribute to equitable social change? How should we evaluate rigour in research with axiology in mind? This symposium extends existing scholarship by foregrounding an explicit axiological focus across areas of social work research, specifically areas of research that are growing in popularity such as cash transfer programs and research conducted in criminal legal settings. In doing so, this symposium will demonstrate how axiology tangibly shapes research designs, resource distribution within research programs, the immediate implications of conducting research for communities as well as how axiology shapes the broader intellectual contribution of research. Each symposium paper will explore an area of social work practice, providing insights into pressing questions of justice in practice, including suppression of client autonomy, protecting client privacy, countering criminalization, and strengthening safety net services. Presenter 1 illustrates how decarceration principles can be used to identify and address three “ethical junctures,” research crossroads that shaped the long-term trajectory and impact of the project. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of values in the context of programmatic implementation at the intersection of the criminal legal and behavioral health systems. The ethical junctures provide a practical blueprint for how existing implementation frameworks can be grounded by ethical principles, in this case grounded by principles of decarceration. Presenter 2 conceptualizes the loss of cash transfer benefits at the end of a research project as a researcher-manufactured financial shock. Though cash transfer research is of increasing interest, we know little about how cash transfer studies in the U.S. are planning for and responding to the financial shocks of pilot program conclusions. Presenter 3 explores the political promise for non-institutional research using the case-study of an inside-out archive constructed with people currently incarcerated in one of the country’s largest jails. This paper presents ethical tensions and possibilities during the project’s development, including decision-making, relational norms, and diverse assessments of risk. Our analyses emphasize the implications of axiology in social work research across three contexts- the criminal legal system, cash transfer programs, and an inside-out organizing practice . Our emphasis on axiology aims to contribute new insights into how social work research can create immediate, sustainable, and equitable impact for marginalized communities. Critical engagement with axiology is particularly salient in the context of an increasingly hostile and hollow state which targets the populations and communities that are often the focus of social work research.
* noted as presenting author
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