Citation Impact of Women in Social Work: Exploring Gender and Research Culture

Purpose: We assessed citation impact scholarship of women in the top 25-ranked schools of social work in the United States. Method: We used a mixed methodology. Part 1 was a secondary data analysis of the top-25 U.S. News and World Report ranked schools from 2012 using the Hirsch h-index over a 10-year period. Qualitative interviews were conducted with graduates from top-ranked schools. We then examined the faculty websites. Results: The mean h-score was 18.64. The majority of these women were employed at the University of Washington (n = 6), followed by Columbia University and the Universities of Southern California (n = 3, respectively), Michigan, and California at Berkeley (n = 2, respectively). Discussion: The overall impact scores for these women are significant and speak to a number of factors including negotiating long-standing systemic and structural variables. We continue to describe elements of research cultures, which are essential to our profession’s academic development in today’s corporate university cultures.