Читать книгу Practitioner's Guide to Using Research for Evidence-Informed Practice - Allen Rubin - Страница 60

In Chapters 1 and 2, we can see that some studies suggest that one of the most important factors influencing service effectiveness is the quality of the practitioner-client relationship, and that factor might have more influence on treatment outcome than the choices practitioners make about what particular interventions to employ. We also know that one of the most important aspects of a practitioner's relationship skills is empathy. It seems reasonable to suppose that the better the practitioner's understanding of what it's like to have had the client's experiences – what it's like to have walked in the client's shoes, so to speak – the more empathy the practitioner is likely to convey in relating to the client. In other instances you may want to learn about the experiences of others – not just clients – to inform your practice decisions. For example, gaining insight into practitioners' experiences using a new caregiver support intervention or family members' experiences caring for an elderly client can help inform your practice decisions about implementing a caregiver support intervention in your own practice.

When we seek to describe and understand people's experiences – particularly when we want to develop a deep empathic understanding of what it's like to walk in their shoes or to learn about their experiences from their point of view – qualitative studies reside at the top of the research hierarchy. Qualitative research can provide rich and detailed information that is difficult, or even impossible, to capture accurately or fully in a quantitative study. Gambrill (2006) illustrated the superiority of qualitative studies for this EIP purpose via a study by Bourgois et al., (2003), which examined the kinds of risks taken by street addicts. Bourgois immersed himself in the “shooting galleries and homeless encampments of a network of heroin addicts living in the bushes of a public park in downtown San Francisco” (p. 260). Virtually all of the addicts reported that when they are surveyed with questionnaires, they distort their risky behavior. Often, they underreport it so that it takes less time to complete the questionnaire. Also, they may deceive themselves about the risks they take because they don't want to think about the risks. Consequently, quantitative methods like surveys would rank lower on a hierarchy for this type of EIP question.