What Counts As Rigorous? Quantcrit, Critical Quantitative Methods, and Epistemic Justice

This roundtable engages a central question in social work research: What counts as rigorous inquiry, and who gets to define it? Quantitative methods hold a central place in social work knowledge production, but their prominence invites critical questions: How have dominant standards of “rigor” been shaped by positivist and Eurocentric assumptions about what counts as valid knowledge? How does social work research rely on cultural values that elevate certain forms of data, expertise, and ways of knowing as more “scientific” than others? In what ways are power and privilege embedded in the processes through which research is funded, conceptualized, rewarded, disseminated, and applied? What knowledge is marginalized when lived experience, community wisdom, and critical frameworks are treated as less legitimate?

This roundtable examines how Quantitative Critical Race Theory (QuantCrit) and Critical Quantitative Methods can help (re)imagine quantitative social work research in service of the BIPOC communities. Rather than rejecting quantitative methods, we ask what they have to offer when used reflexively, grounded in sociohistorical contexts, and aligned with racial justice. We ask how quantitative inquiry can move beyond documenting inequities toward analyzing systemic harm, structural violence, and institutional arrangements that shape unequal life chances. First, we consider the measurement of structural violence and the challenges of translating complex systems of racism and oppression into quantitative indicators. This includes the conceptualization and operationalization of race and racism, the limits of categorization, and the risk of reproducing essentialism or deficit-based narratives through conventional analytic choices. Second, we examine decisions related to analytic samples, including within-group versus between-group comparisons, and how these decisions shape interpretation, visibility, and the political meaning of findings. Third, we discuss analytic strategies such as multilevel analysis that situate individual outcomes within broader social, historical, and institutional contexts.

A central premise of this roundtable is that qualitative and quantitative methods are not opposing methodologies, but part of an interconnected methodological ecosystem, wherein different approaches work in relation rather than hierarchy. Drawing on qualitative methods, mixed methods, Indigenous frameworks, and Black Feminist Thought, panelists discuss how lived experience informs research design, measurements, and interpretation, challenging and extending quantitative inquiry. We also consider how social work has sometimes inherited narrow constructions of rigor from other disciplines without fully interrogating its own history, including the profession’s entanglements with whiteness and exclusionary knowledge production.

Aligned with the SSWR 2027 theme, Social Work Research at the Service of Democracy, this roundtable features five speakers whose research addresses these issues from diverse methodological and substantive perspectives. The session is designed to be dialogic and participatory. Audience members will be encouraged to share experiences, reflect on how rigor is defined and gatekept, and engage in critical self-reflection about what must be unlearned and rebuilt. We ask not only how to critique dominant standards, but also how to practice differently in social work research, pedagogy, and practice. By inviting participants to question, sit with discomfort, and imagine new possibilities, this roundtable aims to advance a more just, reflexive, and transformative vision of rigorous social work inquiry.