A Critical Analysis on Social Welfare Researches in Korea

우리나라 사회복지학 연구경향에 관한 연구 - <한국사회복지학>에 실린 경험분석연구를 중심으로 -

This article examined the trend of 125 empirical researches which were published in Jr. of Korean Social Welfare from the first issue to no. 33. in terms of theoretical and methodological orientations. The content analysis was employed for the purpose of the study. Since 1979, the number of empirical researches was in the trend of increasing. The findings from this research were as follows. 1) Among 166 authors, 96.4% were majored in social welfare. Also 6.0% were practitioners and the rest of them were in the position of professors or researchers. The outcome of lack of interdisciplinary co-work and researcher-practitioner co-work led the article to conclude that the nature of applied social science of social welfare was not so actively pursued in Korea. 2) It was almost impossible to find researches which studied same theme or employed same analytical framework. This meant that the work of re-verifying and proving the contray could not be done although it was essential for theory-building. In other words, the disciplinary of social welfare was far behind in the process of theory-building. 3) The methodology upon which most of researches were relied was quantitative methodology(92.8%). The article concluded 'paradigm shift' was not begun in the disciplinary of social welfare yet. 4) The study concluded that the particularity of empirical researches of social welfare in Korea was descriptive-configurative study. Whereas 65.5% of 125 empirical studies were descriptive-configurative, 25% were hypothesis - model test and only 6% causal analysis. 5) The most applied statistic models through the period from 1979 to 1997 were descriptive statistics such as frequency, chi square test, Pearson's r. More advanced statistics such as logit regression, probit regression, path analysis, covariance structure analysis were shown since 1990.

본 연구는 1979년 이후부터 1997년까지 <한국사회복지학>에 게재된 경험분석연구논문 총 125편을 이론화를 위한 연구경향과 방법론적 특성면에서 분석한 것이다. 경험연구편수는 지속적인 증가추세에 있으며 경험연구점유율은 평균 42.7%에 이르렀다. 분석결과 도출한 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 학제성과 협업성, 선정된 연구주제, 산출지식의 성격 등의 측면에서 분석해 본 결과 사회복지학의 실천성은 아직 확보하지 못하였다고 평가할 수 있다. 둘째, 본 연구에서 분석한 연구들은 개별화된 주제와 서로 다른 분석들에 의해 수행되어 그 결과들은 서로 단절되어 있었으며 연구주제들의 집락형성도 극히 미미한 수준인 것으로 밝혀져 경험분석연구들에 한정시켜 볼 때 우리나라 사회복지학 연구들은 아직 이론화의 과정으로 발전하지 못하였다는 평가를 내릴 수 있다. 첫째, 경험연구의 방법론적 패러다임은 양적 방법론이 압도적으로 우세한 상황으로서 새로운 인식론에 대한 수용이 다른 분야에 비해 더디게 이루어지고 있음을 보여주었다. 넷째, 우리나라 사회복지학의 경험연구단계는 형상서술적 단계라고 결론지을 수 있다.