Introduction

Abstract

This introductory chapter of “Applying a Human Rights Approach to Social Work Research and Evaluation: A ‘Rights’ Research Manifesto ,” introduces a human rights approach to research or a “rights research approach ” to the practice of social work research and evaluation. As a manifesto, or written declaration, it encourages social workers to emancipate themselves from mental slavery and “manifest” instead their own free minds. This chapter asserts that using a rights research approach is a pathway to personal freedom and empowerment and a prerequisite to work most effectively to guide others through a similar liberating and empowerment process. It is argued that any collective efforts on the part of the social work profession must first start with each individual social worker where the research question lies within. Adopting a rights research approach is viewed as the initial step in one’s ability to integrate the thinking, feeling, and doing of human rights research for the purposes of individual, group, and societal transformation. It calls for each social worker to engage in their own personal liberation in order to achieve the mass liberation of the profession to achieve its historical vision of the liberation of the historical and emerging underrepresented and underserved populations that the profession is charged to serve. Historical examples of how a rights research approach in theory and practice have formed the underpinnings of the art and science of human rights-based social work is explored. The chapter introduces the six theme-based strategies of a rights research approach : (1) understanding and applying a human rights lens , (2) research and evaluation that makes a difference , (3) informed decision-making , multiple perspectives , approaches, and methods , (4) social contexts , meaningful participation , relational communication , (5) holistic analysis , discerning meaning from narrative and numeric data , and (6) thoughtful sharing (dissemination) and action . These strategies can be infused in the design and implementation of research projects that are most consistent with promoting human rights and individual, family, and community well-being.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

—Bob Marley (1979)