Ethical guidelines for designing and conducting evaluations of social work practice

We review selected aspects of current ethical guidelines pertaining to the design and conduct of social work evaluation and research studies. We contend that there are significant differences between social science research and evaluation studies, and that the uncritical application of ethical guidelines suitable for regulating social science research may hinder social workers undertaking clinical and program evaluations. What is needed are ethical guidelines that distinguish between retrospective and prospectively designed studies, which enumerate when voluntary and informed consent may not be necessary in order to use data obtained from clients, and clearer standards pertaining to exempting evaluation studies from oversight by Institutional Review Boards.