Research methods in clinical psychology: An introduction for students and practitioners Chris Barker, Nancy Pistrang, and Robert Elliott

1
Research methods in clinical psychologyAn
introduction for students and practitionersChris
Barker, Nancy Pistrang, and Robert Elliott

• CHAPTER 2
• Perspectives on research

2
Background issues

• Philosophical
• Professional
• Political
• Personal

3
What is research?
Form ideas
Compare with original ideas
Gather information
Interpret results
4
Problems in the research cycle

• Data gathering
• Ivory tower isolation
• over-confidence
• Interpretation
• Biases
• Reformulation
• Dogmatism, rigidity

5
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.

6
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

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What is science?

• Induction
• Falsification (Popper)
• Kuhns historical viewpoint

8
Induction

• Observations theories
• e.g., Freuds case studies
• Problems
• Logical basis
• Theory-dependence of observation

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Deduction

• Theory inference test
• Hypothetico-deductive method

10
Popper

• good theories make falsifiable predictions
• conjectures and refutations
• e.g., in neuropsychology
• Problem
• status of potentially disconfirmatory evidence

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Kuhns views

• Paradigm accepted theory and methods
• Normal science
• Scientific revolution replacement of current
  paradigm by another
• Problems
• Incommensurability of paradigms
• No criteria for progress

12
Intuitive practitioner model

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

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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).

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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.

15
Evidence-based practitioner model

• Use best current empirical evidence (especially
  RCTs) to select optimum interventions and
  assessment methods.
• (Sackett et al., 1997)

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Some underlying dichotomies

• Producing versus consuming research
• Pure versus applied research
• Small-N versus large-N research