Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12413
Title: Evidence-Based Practice/Practice-Based Evidence: Which Came First - The Chicken or the Egg?
Contributor(s): Maple, Myfanwy  (author)orcid 
Publication Date: 2013
Handle Link: https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/12413
Abstract: As a researcher, my job is to provide the most robust and rigorous results of the finest quality research I can undertake with the skill and funds I have and present these to the academy. This is how knowledge is built, right? Yes. Challenging? Yes. Infallible? No. In Australia, as in other countries such as the United States, the push for translational research grows with each passing day. Research for research's sake is no longer enough for funding bodies. Rather, the requirement to demonstrate how the proposed research will inform practice is at the front and center of every research grant I write. How will my research translate into practice on the ground? How will service providers access this knowledge? More importantly, how will I access their knowledge to inform my research? As time has passed in my career I have made more and more connections into the practice field - primarily through commissioned evaluations and my social work teaching and scholarship activities. I have also been drawn toward the "evidence" from the practice community. The often untapped, practice-based evidence appeals more and more to me. In this short article, I want to explore some of the issues, challenges, and rewards of engaging with local services, with the hope of sparking interest in this neglected research arena. My published work is most often in the suicide bereavement/postvention field, yet my evaluation consultancies have more often than not been in the field of service provision to indigenous groups in the broader mental health sector, which is the field in which I worked prior to academia. I view this as "upstream" service provision. That is, the services offered to people who are at highest risk of suicide, and whose families and friends will be the ones subsequently informing my research in the future (e.g., the services provided to young indigenous people in a local regional town, the housing services offered to indigenous peoples throughout the regional in which I live and work). Such services are the ones that I evaluate. The family members of these people are those at most risk of becoming future participants in suicide postvention services.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Source of Publication: American Association of Suicidology Newslink, 2013(Spring), p. 28-29
Publisher: American Association of Suicidology
Place of Publication: United States of America
Fields of Research (FoR) 2008: 111708 Health and Community Services
111714 Mental Health
Fields of Research (FoR) 2020: 420305 Health and community services
420313 Mental health services
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2008: 920410 Mental Health
Socio-Economic Objective (SEO) 2020: 200409 Mental health
HERDC Category Description: C3 Non-Refereed Article in a Professional Journal
Publisher/associated links: http://www.suicidology.org/c/document_library/get_file?folderId=256&name=DLFE-783.pdf
Appears in Collections:Journal Article
School of Health

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