Relevant and Rigorous?

1
Relevant and Rigorous?

• Action research evaluation and practitioner
  research in social care
• Ian Shaw (University of York)

2
Presentation Aims

• Report and reflect on a study of small-scale,
  local research and evaluation carried out by
  social care practitioners, and consider its
  relevance for policy evaluation and action
  research.

3
Location of Practitioner Research

• Health related practitioner research
• Housing practitioners
• Teachers
• Social workers

4
PR in Social Care

• An audit and case study evaluation of
  practitioner research in social care in South
  East Wales (2002-3) and its possible implications
  for the development of action research evaluation
• Keane, S., Shaw, I and Faulkner, A. (2003)
  Practitioner Research in Social Care an Audit
  and Case Study Analysis Report to Wales Office of
  RD for Health and Social Care, Wales Assembly
  Government

5
Inquiry Design

• Audit
• Telephone screening interview of 42 projects in
  south east Wales from 1999-2002
• Classification/typology

• Case studies
• Theoretical sample of eight projects
• Interviews/documents
• Recommendations

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Classification of PR in Social Care
Practitioner owned Practitioner owned Agency owned Agency owned
Formal approval No formal approval Formal approval No formal approval
Higher Education link Single data source 7 9 0 0
Higher Education link Multiple data source 3 4 2 0
No Higher Education link Single data source 0 1 0 7
No Higher Education link Multiple data source 0 0 6 3
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Diversity in PR

• Simple/private PR
• Simple/multi-stakeholder PR
• Complex multi-stakeholder PR
• Complex/private PR

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Purposes in PR

• Practitioners are not insensitive to matters of
  ethics, but they do sometimes act as if they are
  in a subordinate relationship to an expert, whose
  advice whether rightly or wrongly recalled - is
  treated as beyond question. This illustrates a
  possible risk in PR that practitioners may be too
  easily discouraged from seeking ethical approval,
  due to lack of experience in weighing the
  seriousness of ethical obstacles.
•   Issues of consent occurred to some degree in
  all the projects studied, and the level of
  negotiation lay on a continuum.

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Purposes in PR (2)

• There is no clear evidence of PR that involving
  service users in the development and management
  of the research project ever took place in these
  case studies, nor in the other studies audited.

• With regard to utilisation of findings, there was
  often a sense of disappointed expectations. There
  was also a strong aspirational quality to
  practitioners accounts of PR utilisation. Are PR
  results more likely to have an impact when they
  resonate with agency priorities?

10
Methods and Processes of PR

• The role of support and networks is important in
  PR, though it is not easy to draw simple
  conclusions, or to identify the factors that are
  associated with supportive projects.

• PR projects that work well are often those that
  enjoy a variety of congruent roles that include
  both support and shaping influences. Yet for
  some, the individualism of the research project
  is what drives the researcher.

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Methods and Processes (2)

• Practitioner researchers tend to take an
  ambivalent attitude to research methodology. This
  can lead to a dependence on the advice of others.
  This may make the project methodology fragile

• This was often linked to growing awareness, and
  learning on the job.
• Practitioners doing PR move back and forth
  between insider and outsider roles

12
Colleagues and professionals

• In choosing to undertake PR there are elements of
  socialisation, selection, earmarking those seen
  as promising, career motivations, formalising
  emergent research interests, and so on.
• positive relationships between research project
  and agency were not universal.

• Joined up PR is almost completely absent. Some
  practitioners and their sponsoring agencies
  apparently did not make any connection between
  problems and developments in delivering joined up
  services, and the PR process.

13
PR and social care careers

•         A general positive impact on a career in
  social work
•         A stepping-stone in a move previously
  planned or otherwise towards a career in which
  research is central.
•         PR involvement regarded as an end in
  itself, with no identifiable impact on career or
  identity.

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Some Reflections

• Practitioner research in social care poses
  questions and issues that act as gateways to
  several of the major debates within social care
  the quality of practice and research, evidence
  based interventions, career development, ethical
  decision making, and so on.
•   Terms like use, insider and own account
  often mask the complexity of the PR process.
•  There is a striking degree of diversity in what
  passes under the PR rubric.

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Some Reflections (2)

• Quantitative skills were probably lacking
  throughout the researcher group, and there were
  few more through-going qualitative designs
• The tendency for PR practitioners to be
  marginalized in one way or another renders their
  survival capacity at constant risk.

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Some Reflections (3)

• The absence of user involvement in almost all PR
  is likely to reinforce an assumption that
  practitioner expertise does not have to be
  complemented by service-users understanding. PR
  is, as a consequence, less likely to promote
  social justice issues in service development and
  delivery. Yet we would not wish to promote a
  practitioner-blame culture, by suggesting that
  this is due solely to practitioner-level
  decisions. It may be part of a PR culture that
  promotes a service development and delivery
  agenda and is often linked to higher education
  demands ways of writing that do not encourage
  multiple stakeholder involvement.

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Some reflections (4)

1. The role of practitioner researcher as both
   insider and outside, and as moving between the
   two, is sensitive and frequently difficult.
2. There is an ever-present risk of marginalisation
   for the practitioner researcher. This stems
   mainly from the frequent points at which
   relationships of authority and power shape the
   decisions for good and ill - about access,
   methods, and utilisation of research results.
3. Despite the tendency to polarise practitioner and
   academic research that we have just noted, there
   were hints that the two roles are both exposed to
   elements of risk of marginalisation.

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Recommendations

• that interested government departments review the
  extent, character, development and associated
  career opportunities of practitioner research in
  social care
• that steps be taken in the light of that review
  to promote the quality of practitioner research
  in social care. We advise at the present time
  against the selective promotion of one type of PR
  at the expense of any other type of PR.
• the support of university based centres for the
  development of PR

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Recommendations (2)

• there is need to respect and even increase the
  present diversity of types of PR in social care
• the development of approaches to PR that draw on
  the ideas presented above regarding multiple
  ownership and a wider range of research
  sophistication

20
Recommendations (3)

• The development of a PR bursary system, similar
  to that already existing for teachers eg through
  the GTCW
• Discuss in context of implementation of the
  research governance frameworks in Wales and
  England
• Review IPR claims in PR in the light of the
  diversity of ownership claims
• That social science, social policy and cognate
  departments in higher education develop guidance
  for postgraduate students that legitimises the
  collaborative dimensions of PR
• feed PR issues into the present work being
  undertaken by the Social Care Institute for
  Excellence on the knowledge base of social care.