Does Anything Work?

Fischer, Joel

doi:10.1300/j079v01n03_01

Cited by 32 publications

(15 citation statements)

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“…The polarities of the debate are characterized, at their extremes, by on the one hand a view of social work as an applied, behavioural science that can be grounded in testable, experimentally derived knowledge about human behaviour (Fischer, 1978), and on the other by a view that it is a form of practice that should be understood as intuition-based, drawing on tacit understanding and ' uncommonly good common sense ' (England, 1986). This rather ideological polarity between positivism and anti-positivism maps onto other associated epistemological and methodological disputations within social work about its purpose and scope.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guidelines across the health and social care divides: The example of the NICE-SCIE dementia guideline

Gould

2011

International Review of Psychiatry

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Increasingly, mental health services are delivered through multidisciplinary teams and settings. This creates particular challenges for the development of evidence-based practice guidelines when different professional groups represented within teams might have different traditions and cultures in relation to what counts as 'evidence', and how that might be synthesized to produce guidance that supports best practice across professional divides. These challenges are explored in relation to integration between health and social care services, where social work in particular has traditionally expressed scepticism about guideline development where it does not incorporate knowledge drawn from qualitative research and perspectives of stakeholders such as service users and carers. This article takes the NICE-SCIE guideline on dementia care as an exemplar of how an integrated process of guideline development can deliver guidance for best practice across integrated mental health services. Finally, some of the issues still facing inter-professional guideline development are considered, and pointers given to eclectic approaches that are beginning to emerge from within social work.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guidelines across the health and social care divides: The example of the NICE-SCIE dementia guideline

Gould

2011

International Review of Psychiatry

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“…Although few writers have articulated the deterministic view that the term &dquo;evidence-based&dquo; suggests, it is clear that the vast majority of writers argue that decision makers need toat the very least-be aware of the research evidence that bears on policies under consideration (for example, Davies, Nutley, and Smith 2000). Certainly the implicit or explicit goal of research-funding agencies has always been to influence policy through science (Weiss and Petrosino 1999), and there have always been individuals who have articulated the need for an evidence-based approach (for example, Fischer 1978). But there has been a surge of interest, particularly in the 1990s, in arguments for research-, science-, or evidence-based policy (for example, Amann 2000; Boruch, Petrosino, and Chalmers 1999;Nutley and Davies 1999;Wiles 2001).…”

Section: Surge Of Interest In Evidence-based Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Meeting the Challenges of Evidence-Based Policy: The Campbell Collaboration

Petrosino

Boruch

Soydan

et al. 2001

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Scie

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Evidence-based policy has much to recommend it, but it also faces significant challenges. These challenges reside not only in the dilemmas faced by policy makers but also in the quality of the evaluation evidence. Some of these problems are most effectively addressed by rigorous syntheses of the literature known as systematic reviews. Other problems remain, including the range of quality in systematic reviews and their general failure to be updated in light of new evidence or disseminated beyond the research community. Based on the precedent established in health care by the international Cochrane Collaboration, the newly formed Campbell Collaboration will prepare, maintain, and make accessible systematic reviews of research on the effects of social and educational interventions. Through mechanisms such as rigorous quality control, electronic publication, and worldwide coverage of the literature, the Campbell Collaboration seeks to meet challenges posed by evidence-based policy. Downloaded from 15 DONALD Campbell (1969) was an influential psychologist who wrote persuasively about the need for governments to take evaluation evidence into account in decisions about social programs. He also recognized, however, the limitations of the evidence-based approach and the fact that government officials would be faced with a number of political dilemmas that confined their use of research. The limits of evidence-based policy and practice, however, reside not only in the political pressures faced by decision makers when implementing laws and administrative directives or determining budgets; they also reside in problems with the research evidence.Questions such as, What works to reduce crime in communities? are not easily answered. The studies that bear on these questions are often scattered across different fields and written in different languages, are sometimes disseminated in obscure or inaccessible outlets, and can be of such questionable quality that interpretation is risky at best. How can policy and practice be informed, if not persuaded, by such a fragmented knowledge base comprising evaluative studies that range in quality? Which study, or set of studies, if any at all, ought to be used to influence policy? What methods ought to be used to appraise and analyze a set of separate studies bearing on the same question? And how can the findings be disseminated in such a way that the very people Donald Campbell cared about-the decision makers in government and elsewhere-receive findings from these analyses that they trust were not the product of advocacy? Donald Campbell unfortunately did not live long enough to bear witness to the creation of the international collaboration named in his honor that ambitiously attempts to address some of the challenges posed by evidence-based policy. The Campbell Collaboration was created to prepare, update, and disseminate systematic reviews of evidence on what works relevant to social and educational intervention (see http:// campbell.gse.upenn.edu). The target audience will include de...

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“…Indeed, there is far too little scientific support -as contrasted to clinical or anecdotal evidence -for the effectiveness of the helping professions (cf. Fischer, 1983;Lorian, 1983). The possibility of iatrogenic outcomes is not widely discussed (Cf.…”

Section: As To Health or The Enhancement Of Healthy Functioning Makementioning

confidence: 99%

Toward a code of ethics for primary prevention

Bloom

1993

J Primary Prevent

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This paper explores the topic of a code of ethics for primary prevention, and offers some tentative guidelines for the purpose of stimulating discussion. Codes of ethics provide guidelines for both procedural issues - such as the relationship of the practitioner with consumers, colleagues, and the community at large - and substantive issues - what goals and objectives to pursue, and how to resolve conflicts between them. This paper discusses some philosophical issues and then presents nine "rules" derived from the Hippocratic tradition, but expanded to fit the context of contemporary primary prevention.

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Does Anything Work?

Cited by 32 publications

References 0 publications

Guidelines across the health and social care divides: The example of the NICE-SCIE dementia guideline

Guidelines across the health and social care divides: The example of the NICE-SCIE dementia guideline

Meeting the Challenges of Evidence-Based Policy: The Campbell Collaboration

Toward a code of ethics for primary prevention

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