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 Compare with original ideas Gather information Interpret results 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 Theory inference test “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