Theoretical and Methodological Shifts in Social Work Research: An AI-Driven Analysis of Postmodern and Critical Theory at the SSWR Annual Conference

Abstract

Purpose: This study empirically documents temporal patterns in social work research's engagement with postmodern and critical theory (P/CT) frameworks. Methods: Large language models (LLMs) were used to analyze 19,134 conference abstracts presented at the Society for Social Work and Research (2012–2025) for P/CT alignment and methodology. Multimodel evaluation demonstrated excellent reliability across six frontier LLMs (kappa = .73). Results: Temporal analysis revealed substantial increases in P/CT engagement, with “Aligned” presentations growing 7.7-fold and “Partially Aligned” tripling between 2012 and 2025. This growth was distinctly concentrated in qualitative research, reaching 9.28% aligned and 47.81% partially aligned by 2025. The share of quantitative research declined (66.03%–48.36%), while qualitative research expanded (18.43%–31.20%). These trends accelerated after 2019. Discussion: Findings validate increased P/CT presence as methodological concentration, not uniform adoption. This provides empirical data for disciplinary discourse and demonstrates artificial intelligence's utility for large-scale content analysis.