Editorial: Building bridges: what can research contribute?
| Pages | 2-3 |
| Published date | 01 October 2006 |
| Date | 01 October 2006 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/17466660200600009 |
| Author | Nick Axford,Michael Little |
2
1Dartington Social
Research Unit, UK
2Dartington Social
Research Unit,
UK and Chapin
Hall Center for
Children,
University of
Chicago, USA
Journal of Children’s Services
Volume 1 Issue 2 October 2006
©Pavilion Journals (Brighton) Ltd
Editorial
Building bridges:
what can research contribute?
Afamous cartoon from The New Yorker in 1961 shows
alittle girl in the middle of a classroom, arms aloft,
with a thought bubble from her head showing that
she is trying to portray a flower. Her classmates aren’t
so sure. Their thought bubbles show that they think
she looks, variously, like an octopus, an aeroplane
and a tree. This illustrates the confusion and
misunderstandings that frequently characterise
relationships in children’s services between
researchers, policy makers and practitioners. Louise
Locock and Annette Boaz (2004) liken this situation
to different communities living not quite ‘worlds
apart’ but at least on different islands. They
emphasise that the divergent concerns, language and
dynamics of these communities can lead to
misunderstandings about what research is required
and howit should be acted upon. Fortunately,they
argue, therearepeople who try to build bridges in
such circumstances; trainers, journalists,
disseminators, policy-makers who spend time in
research settings (and researchers who move into
policy-making) and so on who may be likened to
traders, diplomats and adventurers.
The Journal of Children’s Services seeks to build
bridges. It endeavours to help policy-makers and
practitioners better understand the contribution that
good research can make to improving outcomes for
children in need. This goes beyond reporting the
results of studies and encouraging reflection on their
practical implications, valuable though this is. It
extends to sharing the methods that researchers use
and helping those charged with planning, managing,
implementing and monitoring services to see how
they might assist with their daily work.
In this edition, Tom Jeffery, the civil servant with
lead responsibility for children’s services in England
and Wales, highlights how recent reforms have
emphasised the requirement for agencies to assess
need locally, to use this information together with
international evidence to develop and implement new
services (or strengthen existing provision) and,
finally, to evaluate what emerges. There are similar
expectations in many western developed countries.
Howcan research help to meet these challenges?
First, research provides tools and methods for
measuring what agencies need to know in order to
effectively plan and chart progress. For example, in
their article Cynthia Leung and her colleagues use
standardised instruments in the context of an
evaluation of a parenting programme to capture
children’sbehaviour and levels of parent stress,
perceived competence and depression. Suzanne
Skevington and Fiona Gillison, meanwhile, discuss
measures designed to assess children’squality of life,
reflecting on the strengths and weaknesses of
different approaches and their value in health, social
careand education settings.
The increasingly outcome-driven climate in which
children’s services operate means that there is much
to be said for the greater use of tried-and-tested
measures like these. But we can recall several
conversations with senior managers and planners,
struggling to know how to assess levels of need at
the aggregate level or evaluate service effectiveness,
who have been surprised – and then delighted – to
learn that such tools exist; the people who need the
tools do not necessarily know the people who make
them. The best instruments offer significant
advantages over many data collection methods
currently used by service providers. They have on
their side brevity and user-friendly format, a
standardised form (permitting comparison of results
between places and over time, as well as consistency
in the identification of ‘problem cases’), strong
psychometric properties (ensuring good validity and
reliability) and the potential for aggregation to give
population level estimates. Experiments using
computer-based techniques to apply these measures
Nick Axford1and Michael Little2
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