The Integration of Basic Research, Treatment Research, and Clinical Practice in Pediatric Psychology

Abstract

There are many ways research advances the science of pediatric psychology, as well as clinical psychology in general. Research contributes to the knowledge and thought base on which the future of the field is built. (Roberts and McNeal (1995)) distinguish among four types of empirical research in pediatric psychology: explicative, assessment, prevention, and treatment research. Each approach contributes uniquely to the study of the clinical phenomenon that are the subject matter of pediatric psychology. However, in recent years the balance among these four types of contributions has become skewed. In particular, there is an overemphasis on explicative research, which examines the associations among variables. In addition, there appears to be a chasm between explicative and treatment research, with explicative research seldom informing the development of treatment programs. However, the chasm has not always been there (see Roberts & McNeal, 1995), and was not characteristic of the early days of the field. Clinical research at that time primarily had an applied goal: to produce clinically significant treatment gains for the patients, as opposed to the current theoretical or model building goal of much of explicative research today. While important, explicative research and the associated theory development were not the primary focus of the majority of research.