Objective: This study reports on the operationalization and testing of the newly developed Relationship Quality (RQ) scale, designed to assess an individual's perception of his or her RQ in their current partnership. Methods: Data were generated through extended sampling from an original U.K.-based research project, "Enduring Love? Couple…

The quest for making social work a discipline based entirely on empirical research findings is not new. In this article, the authors briefly review the field of social work in the United States during the past 100 years and discuss how the quest for the status of a profession forced the emphasis on empirical research. However, the authors claim…

Throughout the history of professional social work in the United States, the field has embraced a positivistic view of science, a view continuing to be held by the mainstream of the profession. All social workers, to some extent, embrace the fundamental tenets of positivism. However, the rhetoric espousing positivistic science has not been matched…