One indicator of change within a profession is the journal literature. We examined articles published in three major social work journals in 1957 and from 1967 through 1972 to discover whether changes had occurred in important content areas, in theoretical perspectives, or in methods of intervention. A general decline in the numbers of social treatment articles was found with a corresponding increase in policy, administration, service-delivery, and client-behavior articles. Within the treatment literature, increased theoretical diversity appeared evident. A review of articles discussing intervention subsystems revealed no change in the number of articles focusing upon work with individuals; however, the number of family intervention-oriented articles decreased slightly, while the number of group intervention-oriented articles increased slightly.
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Howe et al. (1974) studied this question.