EBP And Social Science Research Flashcards
What does evidence based practice involve?
Integration of individual clinical expertise with the best available external clinical evidence from systematic research
Why do we use systematic reviews?
Authoritative, generalisable and up to date
Save clinicians having to locate and appraise studies themselves
May reduce delay between discoveries and implementation
Help prevent biased decisions
Relatively easily converted into guidelines
What are the practical criticisms of EBP?
May be impossible to create and maintain systematic reviews across all specialities
Challenging and expensive to disseminate and implement findings
RCTs are gold standard but not always feasible
Choice of outcomes often very biomedical - limit the interventions trialled
Publication bias
What are the philosophical criticisms of EBP?
Does not align with doctors’ modes of reasoning
Population level outcomes does not mean it will work for the individual
Potential to create unreflective rule-followers of the HCPs
Professional autonomy?
What are the problems getting evidence into practice?
Evidence exists but doctors don’t know about it
Doctors know about it but don’t use it due to culture/habit/judgement
Organisational systems cannot support it
Commissioning decisions reflect different priorities
Resources not available to implement
What are the 2 main groups of research methods?
Quantitative
Qualitative
Give some strengths of quantitative data
Reliability and repeatability
Usually large sample size, more representative
Seen as more scientific
Easier to analyse than qualitative
What do we mean by a VALID questionnaire?
Measures what it is supposed to measure
What do we mean by a RELIABLE questionnaire?
Measures things consistently
What are the problems with quantitative methods?
May force people into inappropriate categories
Don’t allow people to express thoughts in the way they want
May not access all important info
May not be effective in establishing causality
Give some methods of qualitative research
Observation
Interviews
Focus groups
Documents
Define ethnography
Studying human behaviour in its natural context
What are some problems with focus groups?
Not so useful for getting individual experiences
Some topics may be too sensitive
Views that are different from norm may be inhibited
Can be difficult to arrange
What are qualitative methods good for?
Understanding perspective
Accessing more info
Explaining relationships between variables
