Research methods in clinical psychology: An introduction for students and practitioners Chris Barker, Nancy Pistrang, and Robert Elliott CHAPTER 2 Perspectives on research

Background issues Philosophical Professional Political Personal

What is research? Form ideas Gather information Interpret results Compare with original ideas

Problems in the research cycle Data gathering –“Ivory tower” isolation –over-confidence Interpretation –Biases Reformulation –Dogmatism, rigidity

Pure and applied research Pure (or basic) research addresses the generation and testing of theory. Applied research addresses practical questions -- also known as evaluation/ audit/ quality assurance/ health services research.

Dictionary definition (OED) “A search or investigation directed to the discovery of some fact by careful consideration or study of a subject; a course of critical or scientific enquiry.” Implications: Careful, methodical study Detached, critical, scholarly attitude No prescribed method Discovery versus confirmation Facts and reality

What is science? Induction Falsification (Popper) Kuhn’s historical viewpoint

Induction Observations theories e.g., Freud’s case studies Problems: –Logical basis –Theory-dependence of observation

Deduction Theoryinferencetest “Hypothetico-deductive method”

Popper good theories make falsifiable predictions “conjectures and refutations” –e.g., in neuropsychology Problem: status of potentially disconfirmatory evidence

Kuhn’s views Paradigm: accepted theory and methods “Normal science” Scientific revolution: replacement of current paradigm by another Problems: Incommensurability of paradigms No criteria for progress

Intuitive practitioner model Conduct clinical work on basis of personal intuition and of knowledge from sources other than research.

Scientist-practitioner model Articulated in the USA in the 1940s -- also known as the Boulder model (APA, 1947; Raimy, 1950). Clinical psychologists are trained to be clinicians as well as researchers (a twin track approach).

Applied-scientist model (Shapiro, 1967, 1985) Clinical work as a scientific endeavour: –Apply the findings of general psychology –Only use empirically validated assessment methods –Form hypotheses about the nature and determinants of the client's problems and collect data to test these hypotheses. Research and practice are integrated, not dichotomized.

Evidence-based practitioner model Use best current empirical evidence (especially RCTs) to select optimum interventions and assessment methods. (Sackett et al., 1997)

Some underlying dichotomies Producing versus consuming research Pure versus applied research Small-N versus large-N research