Social Care Research: A Suitable Case for Systematic Review

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Social Care Research A Suitable Case for
Systematic Review?

• Imogen Taylor
• Joint Social Work Education Conference
• July 2007
• Sharland, E. and Taylor, I. (2006) Social care
• research a suitable case for systematic
  review?
• Evidence and Policy, 2(4), pp.503-523.

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Central Question

• How might systematic reviews best
• address social care research, to inform policy
  and practice?
• Starting point
• not what can systematic review do with social
  care?
• but what does social care require of systematic
  review?

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Is social care distinctive?

• multiple knowledge sources
• wicked problems complexity, ambiguity,
  contradiction indeterminacy
• negotiation of answers
• process and experience, not just outcomes
• diverse and complex organisations
• theorised reflective enterprise
• ethical enterprise
• user knowledges and participation central
• research predominantly qualitative, descriptive,
  small scale, informal, interpretive

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TAPUPAS Quality Standards

• Transparency
• Accuracy
• Purposivity
• Utility
• Propriety
• Accessibility
• Specificity (to source)
• plus
• Productivity

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Interprofessional Education for Qualifying Social
Work (SCIE)

• what is known about IPE at qualifying social work
  level?
• what is effective, what are facilitators and
  barriers to success?
• 42 empirical studies in thematic analysis
• 13 evaluative studies in in-depth review

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Key principles for systematic review in social
care

• 1. Systematic review is an interpretative
  activity
• 2. Reviews to ask what do we know about,
  what works for whom, in what contexts and
  how can we understand?
• 3. Methodological inclusivity appropriate
  quality standards without hierarchies of evidence

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Key principles for systematic review in social
care cont.

• 4. Multiple perspectives and participatory
• approaches foregrounded
• 5. Relevance, utility and productivity as
• valued as rigour - signal not just noise
• 6. Inclusive of theory core not context
• 7. Iterative not linear processes
• 8. Manageability