Social Work Research Methods

Building Knowledge for Practice

Stuart A. Kirk is the Marjorie Crump Professor and Chair of the PhD Program in the Department of Social Welfare in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his BA and DSW from the University of California, Berkeley, and his MSW from the University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. He has been on the faculty at the University of Hawaii, University of Kentucky, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, and Columbia University. In the 1980s, he served as Dean of the School of Social Welfare at the State University of New York at Albany. He is the author, coauthor, or editor of over a hundred publications on research, social services, and mental health. His books include The Selling of DSM: The Rhetoric of Science in Psychiatry (Aldine, 1992), Controversial Issues in Mental Health (Allyn & Bacon, 1994), Multicultural Issues in Social Work (NASW, 1996), Social Policy: Reform, Research, and Practice (NASW, 1997), and Making Us Crazy: DSM—The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorder (Free Press, 1997). He served as Editor-in-Chief of the NASW journal Social Work Research from 1992 to 1996.