Resources

Organizations, standards, books, journals, and learning materials for social work researchers working with data science and AI. To suggest an addition, email the co-conveners.

Organizations & initiatives

• Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR). Our home society. The SIG meets at the SSWR Annual Conference each January.
• Harness Technology for Social Good (Grand Challenges for Social Work). The national initiative organizing social work around technology for social good.
• husITa. International association promoting the ethical use of information technology in human services.
• Social Work AI Network (SWAN). Professional society for social work scholars working on AI, offering research collaboration, mentoring, and professional development for faculty and graduate students.
• The AI Social Worker. Practice-side platform by Dr. Marina Badillo-Diaz (LCSW): workshops, agency consulting, and a free guidebook and prompt library for ethical AI adoption aligned with the NASW Code of Ethics.

Professional standards & guidance

• Standards for Technology in Social Work Practice. NASW, ASWB, CSWE, & CSWA (2017). Joint standards covering public information, service delivery, data and privacy management, and education/supervision.
• AI and Social Work (NASW). NASW’s hub for AI resources: an ethics tipsheet on AI use in social work, CE courses, and NASW Press materials on AI in behavioral health.
• The AI Revolution in Social Work: NASW’s Call for Action. NASW (2025). Policy statement on AI’s risks and benefits for the profession, calling for a congressional AI commission for social workers.
• CSWE Task Force on Technology Report. CSWE Commission on Educational Policy (2024). Report on digital skills, how technology changes social work learning, and how AI affects the field’s goals, with recommendations feeding into the 2029 EPAS.

Books

• Artificial Intelligence and Social Work. Tambe & Rice (eds.), Cambridge University Press, 2018. Field-tested AI applications to social work problems, including HIV prevention outreach among homeless youth.
• Digital Social Work: Tools for Practice with Individuals, Organizations, and Communities. Goldkind, Wolf, & Freddolino (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2018. Case studies of technology tools such as social media, GIS, and virtual worlds across practice, research, and policy.
• Teaching Social Work with Digital Technology. Hitchcock, Sage, & Smyth, CSWE Press, 2019. Integrating digital technology and digital literacy across the social work curriculum.
• Data Science for Social Good: Philanthropy and Social Impact in a Complex World. Cattuto & Lapucci (eds.), Springer, 2021. Computational methods applied to humanitarian response, public health, and sustainable development.
• Data for Social Good: Non-Profit Sector Data Projects. Farmer, McCosker, Albury, & Aryani, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022 (open access). Case studies and practical guidance for community-sector data analytics projects.
• Artificial Intelligence in Social Work: Bridging Technology and Humanity. An & Lindsey (eds.), Springer, forthcoming August 2026.

Journals

• Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. SSWR’s flagship journal; publishes computational and data-intensive social work research.
• Journal of Technology in Human Services. Long-running venue for technology applications in human services practice and research.
• Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR). Digital health venue frequently publishing AI and NLP work relevant to behavioral health.

Learning

• Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS). Free two-week summer institutes and open-access video lectures and tutorials introducing computational social science to social scientists and data scientists.
• Coursera. University-run online courses and specializations in Python, machine learning, data science, and AI, most auditable for free.
• Kaggle Learn. Free, short, hands-on courses in Python, pandas, and machine learning fundamentals.
• fast.ai. Free practical deep learning courses aimed at researchers coming from applied fields.
• The Carpentries. Workshops teaching foundational coding and data skills to researchers, including social scientists.