Developing and Delivering Practice-Based Evidence

"The field of psychotherapy has witnessed an increasing emphasis on the need for research evidence that can inform clinical practice. As this volume most clearly illustrates, however, there is also an important need for clinical practice to offer input on the effectiveness of our treatments. More than just providing lip service to closing the gap between research and practice, this edited volume gives us specific suggestions and guidelines for how this may be done. Indeed, it is a major contribution in our search for therapy interventions that have both a firm grounding in research evidence and converging support from clinical reality."
—Marvin R. Goldfried, PhD, ABPP, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Stony Brook University, USA

"We are now familiar with evidence based practice that has powerfully influenced service provision in the psychological therapies.  As practitioners however, we are acutely aware of its limitations. Research that informs the evidence base we are routinely referred to is distant and remote from our experience. It feels disempowering as our every day practice is influenced by randomised controlled trials that espouse a medical model that does not reflect the diversity and complexity of practice as counsellors, psychotherapists and psychologist know it.  We are acutely aware that clients with a single diagnosis are rare and that our clients come in unique packages that could never be captured in a meaningful group that could reliably be randomised for trial purposes.  Practitioners have been marginalised and disempowered by current research paradigms and it is time for a change.
This book provides just the change in emphasis that we are looking for and indeed hungry for. It provides a comprehensive account of everything a practitioner needs to know about the generation of practice based evidence.  It is just the book that is needed to inspire practitioners to engage with research through meeting with others in practitioner networks or influencing the agencies they work in, to start collecting data. A ground swell of researcher practitioners engaging in meaningful research with their own clients or agencies can influence theory and practice for the future. Indeed practice based evidence could become the new evidence based practice.
Many advocates of practitioner research, who have themselves already made substantial contributions to theory and practice through the development of theories, instruments and systems have contributed to this book. Indeed, it is a potentially historical text that captures in one volume the assembled knowledge of the vanguard who will lead essential changes in the way that knowledge is generated in the field of psychotherapy. It has the potential to be revolutionary as it becomes a recommended text for psychotherapy researchers and practitioners that will herald a shift in how research is conducted, who does it, how it is reported and the influence it will have  on future services."
—Professor Sue Wheeler, Director of Counselling and Psychotherapy Programme, University of Leicester, UK