Wren: Evaluating Research
As a clinical social worker, social justice is a core value, and I’ve often used the idea of “person-in-environment” in getting to know my clients in a variety of settings. So, it shouldn’t have been surprising to me that social psychology has influenced my work at really all stages of my clinical training. I consistently focus on the influence of the social situation, which I think has allowed me to avoid attribution biases that are prominent in mental health fields. However, a thorough knowledge of the scientific method has been particularly invaluable.
Whether I was working as a therapist in a county jail setting or as a case manager in a supportive housing setting, being able to use my knowledge of the scientific method to critically evaluate the evidence basis for clinical interventions has been important to my work. Having the skill to identify relevant research articles, identify how any one variable is operationalized, and reflect on the validity and generalizability of any one study, and having a thorough understanding of the underlying statistics has helped me to better identify when and in which ways a clinical intervention is likeliest to succeed. But it’s also helped me to understand what the research says and what it doesn’t. For instance, there are significant differences between a study with promising results that has not been replicated, has low effect sizes, in which there was no random assignment to condition, and using a small sample size, and its opposite. Knowing the difference has been of direct relevance to my professional work. Being better able to discriminate between strong and weak research findings has made me a better clinical social worker, and I use my research knowledge every day.