Practitioner Orientation Research Articles

Barriers to Public Relations Program Research

A mail survey (n = 300) of public relations practitioners assessed role orientations, research orientations, and perceived barriers to performing public relations research. The data showed 2 distinct but correlated groups of practitioner orientations (managers and technicians) and 2 orthogonal groups of research orientations (source orientation and receiver orientation). Budget was considered more of a constraint for management-oriented practitioners, with time and training more of a problem for technician-oriented practitioners. Supervisor interest and training were motivators to research for those with a management orientation. Client interest had no positive or negative associations with the perceived ability to perform public relations research. The results suggest that management-oriented practitioners appreciate the need for receiver-oriented data but may not communicate its value effectively when budgeting decisions are made. Technician-oriented practitioners, meanwhile, appear aware of the limitations of source-oriented practices but need further training to enable them to change operating styles.

The practice orientations of physicians and patients: the effect of doctor–patient congruence on satisfaction

This study investigated the extent to which the individual orientations of physicians and patients and the congruence between them are associated with patient satisfaction. A survey was mailed to 400 physicians and 1020 of their patients. All respondents filled out the Patient–Practitioner Orientation Scale, which measures the roles that doctors and patients believe each should play in the course of their interaction. Patients also rated their satisfaction with their doctors. Among patients, we found that females and those who were younger, more educated, and healthier were significantly more patient-centered. However, none of these variables were significantly related to satisfaction. Among physicians, females were more patient-centered, and years in practice was related to satisfaction and orientation in a non-linear fashion. The congruence data indicated that patients were highly satisfied when their physicians either had a matching orientation or were more patient-centered. However, patients whose doctors were not as patient-centered were significantly less satisfied.

Comment on the Impact of Leisure Research

Taken together, the two articles (Jordan & Roland [JR Samdahl & Kelly [S&K]) present a sobering picture as to the contribution made by leisure researchers. Given the limited amount of space, I will not reiterate the points made by the authors. Rather, I will look at the issue from a somewhat broader perspective that addresses how leisure might be made more attractive to a broader audience. Any discussion of the impact of a body of literature should begin with a discussion of the most prevalent journals in the field. As per S&K, my focus will be on Leisure Sciences (LS) and the Journal of Leisure Research (JLR). A review of the missions of each journal suggests that the study of leisure is interdisciplinary in nature and intended for an audience that includes both academics and practitioners. Interestingly this perspective has not changed very much over the past two decades. In a review of leisure and recreation as a scholarly topic between 1972 and 1982, Rabel Burdge (1983) commented that the study of leisure requires a multidisciplinary orientation. Practical application of findings is seen as the desired end product of leisure research (p. 104). Thus, it comes as no surprise that formal inquiry into the leisure phenomenon has been studied from a number of different social science perspectives including anthropology, geography, sociology, economics, and psychology. Consistent with the mission statements, therefore, the study of leisure represents an applied discipline in two ways. First, it represents a context in which theories and methods from other core disciplines might be applied. Second, information produced from the can also be applied to real world settings, although J&R's article suggests that practitioners have very little use for or interest in this (see also Parr, 1996). I would like to begin my comments by discussing the audience for these journals. One way the academic/practitioner distinction might be clarified is by applying a conceptual framework developed by Brinberg and McGrath (1985) who outlined three broad domains of validity in research: conceptual, methodological, and substantive. Each domain is further differentiated into relations, elements, and embedding systems. For example, conceptual elements are properties of actors behaving a given context (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, involvement) and relations are the connections between properties (e.g., attitudes predict intentions in Ajzen and Fishbein's [1975] Theory of Reasoned Action). The methodological domain provides researchers with the tools to assess relations among variables. The substantive domain is represented by actors behaving in some real world context or setting (e.g., campers, camp directors). Relations, in this case, are the pattern of events that occur within the context (e.g., the interaction of the camp director with camDers) . In the traditional experimental paradigm (i.e., academic orientation), a researcher first selects elements and relations from the conceptual domain, then goes to the methodological domain to design the study and test relations, and then selects a substantive domain in which to conduct the research. The specific substantive domain is often selected on the basis of convenience. Tinsley (1997) alluded to this point in a recent LScommentary: As a psychologist, I am much less interested in the nature of the activity (e.g., volleyball or picnicking) than I am in the effects of participation in the activity on the individual, the conditions necessary for those effects to occur, and the lasting consequences or benefits of those effects (p. 293). In contrast, a strict empirical approach (i.e., practitioner orientation) begins with a researcher selecting elements and relations from the substantive domain, drawing upon the methodological domain to develop a set of observations, and then using the conceptual domain as a basis for interpreting the observations. …

Treatment of depressive patients in general practice: The effects of a short training course in the practice orientation of general practitioners

The objective of this study was to assess the changes after a short training course in the practice orientation of general practitioners (GPs) in diagnosing and treating patients with depression. A controlled intervention study design was used, with pre- and post-intervention measurements. The intervention was conducted in four health care centers in Finland. One health care center functioned as the control. The intervention was a 3-day training course, targeted at all the staff of the intervention health care centers. It included lectures on depression and practice in small groups, focusing especially on patient-caregiver relationships and interaction. Both in the intervention and in the control health care centers all patients were screened for depression during 1 week before and 4 months after the training. The agreement on the patients' depressive status was measured by comparing the patients' Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) scores with the GPs' assessments. Practice orientation was evaluated from descriptions given by the treating GPs. In the intervention health care centers 18% (210 of 1154) of the patients in the pretest phase and 17% (132 of 799) in the posttest phase were indicated as depressed by the BDI. Contrary to expectations, the GPs' originally low sensitivity (in comparison with the BDI) in detecting depression decreased even somewhat more after the training course (17.1%/11.4%). However, the practice changed slightly from being symptom-oriented toward being patient- or even family-oriented in the intervention health care centers.

Scientific Method, Marketing Theory Development and Academic vs Practitioner Orientation: A Review

This article presents a critical review of two highly debated issues -- the metatheoretical underpinnings of marketing science, and academic versus practitioner orientation of marketing theory development. It identifies the major factors underlying these controversies, discusses their relevance for the development of marketing and argues that knowing the objectives of marketing and the ways to achieve them are more important than determining whether marketing is a science. The academics and practitioners are the two most important shapers of marketing knowledge who should pursue both basic as well as applied research and adopt contextually related methodological pluralism in their research efforts.

Differences Between Psychologists Working in Counseling Centers and Independent Practice

ABSTRACT A survey was conducted with psychologists employed either in counseling centers or independent practice. Independent practitioners were older and more likely to be male, experienced, credentialcd, and to have graduated from a counseling psychology program, than those in counseling centers. Eclecticism was a popular orientation of practitioners in both settings. Most change from training theoretical orientation to current use was away from psychodynamic and humanistic to cognitive-behavioralism and eclecticism. Practitioners were time conscious, regardless of setting or theoretical orientation. Ethnic and racial minority practitioners and clients were underrepresented. Findings were discussed in terms of career development issues and economic pressures.

The effects of family systems medicine training on the practice orientations of general practitioners.

The effects of family systems medicine training on the practice orientations of general practitioners.

"The effects of family systems medicine training on the practice orientations of general practitioners": Commentary.

"The effects of family systems medicine training on the practice orientations of general practitioners": Commentary.

A History of Job-Based Alcoholism Programs: 1972–1980

We describe changes in the design of job-based alcoholism programs between 1972 and 1980, and discuss the influences of professional organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous, the National Council on Alcoholism, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the Association of Labor-Management Administrators and Consultants on Alcoholism on program models. Interorganizational relations and program evolution are analyzed using a social movements perspective. Job-based programs enjoyed rapid growth, acceptance and institutionalization in the seventies. However, changes in organizational goals, practitioner orientations, and workplace strategies indicate that the modern antialcoholism movement's goals were displaced by those promoting job-based programs during this period.

Apocalyptic versus Celebratory Options for Anthropology on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century: The Discussion Continues

and others, is bound to continue fostering new ideas about the scope and intent of anthropology. For example, I think we can look forward to a period of time in which there will be even greater, and more creative, tension between applied anthropology's mandate to prove itself useful and the increasing critical self-awareness and reflexivity of our discipline as a whole. I also suspect there will be (or at least should be) new attempts to resolve and perhaps extinguish distinctions we have made between academic and practitioner orientations to applied anthropology-distinctions that were made primarily to advance the cause of practice outside academia, but that have now assumed a boorish mystique and repetitive soul-searching that describes few differences of consequence. Attempts to negotiate these distinctions and tensions might well lead the coming generation of applied anthropologists to reach for the scientific and poetic horizons Edward Spicer put before us in 1974. It would be a world of action in which human values and initiative had priority (although not, in every case precedence) over the technologies we have made. It would be a place more receptive to the rich diversity of human desire, made safer for the poet in every one of us. And would it then be a better world? That is strictly unknowable. N O T E S

Confronting the Reality of Collaborative Practice Research: Issues of Practice, Design, Measurement, and Team Development

The social work literature encourages practitioners and researchers to form partnerships to conduct practice research, but service providers and empirical researchers rarely join in such efforts (Dies, 1983; Fanshel, 1980; Kirk, Osmalov, & Fischer, 1976; Siegel, 1984). Well-intentioned efforts to engage in practice research may be undermined by a failure to confront issues that inevitably arise in collaboration between practitioners and researchers. Such collaboration is also ill-served by the paucity of realistic guidelines in the social work literature for conducting this form of research. In response to this gap, this article systematically looks at the different motives and perspectives of the researcher and practitioner in investigative efforts and examines issues that arise in collaborative research. An analysis of field notes that documented the authors' four-year practice-research partnership reveals issues related to practice, design, measurement, and team development that act as impediments to a productive practice-research partnership. Failure of the Practice Research Literature A strategy that unifies practitioners and researchers in research that is relevant to practice has not been identified to date. Rather, the extant literature encourages practitioners to participate in research projects and evaluate their practice (Briar, 1977; Kirk et al., 1976; Siegel, 1984; Wells, Feldman, & Kelman, 1988) and advises social work researchers to make their research more relevant to practice (Austin, 1977; Briar, 1980; Bushnell & St. L. O'Brien, 1977; Fanshel, 1980; Kirk, 1977; Schilling, Schinke, Kirkham, Meltzer, & Norelius, 1988; Thomas, 1978), without providing clear guidelines for the conduct of collaborative research. Moreover, scant attention is paid to differences between practitioners and researchers. The practice-research relationship is conveyed as unidirectional--from researcher to practitioner--favoring the priorities of research and implying that the perspective of the researcher is more important than that of the practitioner in developing, designing, and conducting the research. The impression imparted by the practice research literature is that the researcher does not view the practitioner as a full partner in the research process, but rather as a consumer of research or a data gatherer. Not having recognized and taken advantage of the knowledge the practitioner brings to practice research, researchers have largely failed to identify practitioner-relevant research strategies (Marsh, 1983), and practitioners dismiss the pragmatic application of research findings as irrelevant when not readily apparent. The literature may overemphasize the divergent theoretical orientations of practitioners and researchers in conducting practice research (Kirk, 1977; Minahan, 1977; Rothman, 1977; Turem, 1977), when, in fact, conflicting viewpoints and ideas on research design more often impede practice-research partnerships. For example, researchers routinely hold up rigorous research designs as gold standards, so that an unrealistic methodology for research in practice settings may deepen an aversion to research and alienate practitioners who might otherwise use social science knowledge to guide practice (Rothman, 1977). To illustrate, Kirk and Fischer's (1976) study of social workers' knowledge of research examined practitioners' ability to identify a sound research design, use of a control group being the operational definition of a sound research design. Use of such standards, however, may be constrained in practice settings because of ethical concerns and limited resources (Marsh, 1983; Wodarski, 1986). Despite these shortcomings, initial attempts to address the issues inherent in practice research have appeared in the practice research literature. Single-system research designs have shown promise for addressing the need for relevance and practitioner involvement (Bloom & Fischer, 1982). …

Career Anchors of Information Systems Personnel

:Career research in the information systems (IS) field has primarily focused on external motivators associated with organizational factors and material incentives. IS empirical research investigating the internalized career orientations of practitioners is necessary to match individual expectations with corporate human resource planning.This study identifies several career anchors or orientations maintained by IS personnel. By administering the Career Orientations Inventory to 321 IS personnel, Managerial and Technical Competence, Identity, Service, Organizational Stability, and Variety career orientations are distinguished. These internal anchors significantly influence how IS and human resource management should (1) plan corporate IS career paths, (2) nurture IS employees during their careers, and (3) encourage appropriate communication about career advancement.

Value orientations of clinical social work practitioners

Six hundred and forty-two of 1,218 randomly sampled social workers in Texas certified as Advanced Clinical Practitioners responded to a pretested, mailed questionnaire as part of a study of personal value systems and personality traits. Agency practitioners, combination practitioners and those in private practice only are compared on their rank ordering of eight statements corresponding to four value orientations: (1) entrepreneurial, (2) social, welfare/change, (3) low risk, and (4) providing psychotherapy. Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney tests yielded significant differences between the three groups. Nonprivate practitioners and those in private practice only were found to have almost symmetrically juxtaposed personal value systems. Combination practitioners were found to be a distinct group with a unique value system different in important respects from both nonprivate practitioners and from those in private practice only. Comparisons with other studies and implications for future research are discussed.

Worlds in collision, worlds in collusion: The uneasy relationship between the policy community and the academic community

Both the government national security policy community and the academic community are concerned with problems of political terrorism. A major gap exists, however, between these two communities in terms of cooperation and information flow. This gap reflects differences in primary mission, role definition, professional training, and career considerations. The government practitioner's requirement for dealing with crises and producing immediate results leads to a truncated time frame which insufficiently considers long‐term causes and consequences. Moreover, he tends to place overly great reliance on classified information, insufficiently attending to understandings which may derive from open sources. This is a function of role, not training, for the academic who moves from the university to the government quickly adopts the government practitioner's orientation. The academic, on the other hand, may be inhibited by career considerations from cooperating with the government, for in some institutions this would reflect negatively on tenure considerations. Moreover, he may not convey his knowledge in a manner which is responsive to the time frame and practical requirements of the government. Each of the two communities can benefit from knowledge and perspective of the other, and from an enhanced understanding of the mutual institutional constraints. Internships, government‐academic exchanges, joint workshops and seminars can assist in briding the gap. Moreover, academics can make important indirect contributions by re‐framing problematic questions through public commentary in print and electronic media.

The State of NCME: Remembering the Past, Looking to the Future

What are the roots of NCME? What were our initial goals and how well have we attained them? Are we drifting away from our practitioner orientation? What should be our policy on important matters in educational practice and our role in sociopolitical issues in educational measurement?

Introduction To Special Section: Airline Operations Research

This special issue is devoted to applications of MS/OR that have actually been implemented in at least one airline worldwide and that work. I made a special effort to solicit papers from practitioners and to ask practitioners as well as academics to referee the papers. This practitioner orientation made putting this special issue together extremely difficult for several reasons.

Some characteristics of the psychiatric population attending a primary care centre in Kuwait.

This study examined the sociodemographic correlates of psychiatric illness in a primary care centre in Kuwait. A total of 164 psychiatric patients seen over a 3-year period formed the experimental group while 165 nonpsychiatric patients attending the same centre formed the control group. Results showed significant differences in basic demographic variables of the 2 groups. The psychiatric patients were significantly more likely to be single, unskilled, young, less educated and living alone or in an overcrowded household and to report more recent life events than controls. The absence of family and social support, lacking a meaningful job and chronicity of illness were significantly correlated with poor treatment response. Possible interpretations of the results were discussed in the cultural context of our patients. The fact that 57% of the psychiatric patients had been ill for more than 6 months prior to consultation highlights the importance of orientation of primary care practitioners to the psychiatric aetiology of somatic presentation of many of their patients.

Professional development for institutional research: A descriptive profile of academic programs and an analysis of curriculum

A survey of 88 American higher education programs found that 9 of the programs offer an area of concentration in institutional research and 17 programs have an institutional-research core course. These programs are identified, and the content of the curriculum is described. Planning topics received the most emphasis in institutional research courses; topics related to facilities and research methodology received low emphasis scores. The theoretical or practitioner orientation of the core course is analyzed in the second section. In most of the courses, there was a positive correlation between the topics emphasized in the core course and the theoretical orientation of those topics, but the coefficient was significant in only a few cases. As expected, programs with an area of concentration tend to stress theoretical concepts in their core course, while programs without an institutional research concentration are more practitioner-oriented.

Drug addiction in the Federal Republic of Germany: problems and responses.

SummaryDrug addiction started to become a serious problem in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) around 1970. The number of heavy users of illicit drugs, predominantly young people and mainly opiate dependants, increased continually up to the years 1979–80 to an estimated 50,000 people. Since then it has stayed at that plateau. Today there is a strong trend towards polydrug abuse including legal drugs and alcohol. The abuse of cocaine shows an increase, especially among first users of ‘hard’ illicit drugs. At present the most threatening problem is the development of the disease Aids: at least a third of those intravenous drug abusers who underwent the test are HIV positive. The treatment system for drug abusers is predominantly psychosocially orientated and does not include substitute (methadone) programmes. Today there are 580 out‐patient and 154 residential drug treatment centres in the FRG. Outcome evaluation studies of the current treatment approach show that about 25 to 35% of the drug addicts are abstaining. The new Narcotics Law of 1982 with its outstanding principle of ‘therapy instead of punishment’ still causes considerable problems in practice. The experience that treatment programmes alone cannot solve the drug problem has led to a large extension of drug abuse prevention during the last years. However, without changes in the organization of research and more participation and research orientation of practitioners we cannot expect marked progress.

Multiple Orientations for the Conduct of Marketing Research: An Analysis of the Academic/Practitioner Distinction

A distinction often is made in marketing between academic and practitioner-oriented research. That distinction has been used to justify one type of research by highlighting the limitations of the other. The authors use a validity network schema developed by Brinberg and McGrath to characterize academic and practitioner orientations in research. Three extended examples (research using the Fishbein theory of reasoned action, causal modeling, and consumer satisfaction/complaining behavior) illustrate the use of both academic and practitioner orientations. The authors argue that both are necessary for understanding marketing problems.