LibGuides: Art Therapy (Graduate): Understanding & evaluating information

Types of studies

Research method	Advantages	Disadvantages
Survey	Yields a lot of information Provides a good way to generate hypotheses Can provide information about many people since it’s cheap and easy to do	Provides information about behavior that can’t be observed directly Relies on self-report data, which can be misleading Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships Sometimes gives incomplete information Sometimes relies only on self-report data, which can be misleading
Case study	Provides a good way to generate hypotheses Yields data that other methods can’t provide	Can be subjective and thus may yield biased results Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships Sometimes yields biased results
Naturalistic observation	Can be useful for generating hypotheses Provides information about behavior in the natural environment	May be difficult to do unobtrusively Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships Sometimes yields biased results
Laboratory observation	Enables use of sophisticated equipment for measuring and recording behavior Can be useful for generating hypotheses	Carries the risk that observed behavior is different from natural behavior Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships
Test	Gives information about characteristics such as personality traits, emotional states, aptitudes, interests, abilities, values, and behaviors	Requires good reliability and validity before it can be used Doesn’t allow conclusions about cause-and-effect relationships
Experiment	Identifies cause-and-effect relationships Distinguishes between placebo effects and real effects of a treatment or drug	Can be artificial, so results may not generalize to real-world situations

SparkNotes. (n.d.) Research methods in psychology (Chart). Retrieved from http://www.sparknotes.com/psychology/psych101/researchmethods/section3/page/3/

Evidence-based practice

Evidence-based practice (EBP) principles are being adopted by many professions related to the creative therapies, including: medicine; nursing; social work; and education.

The EBP model is built on five steps.

Ask: Formulate an answerable question
Acquire: Use information resources to search for evidence
Appraise: Evaluate the evidence in terms of its validity, impact, and applicability to your question
Apply: Use the best evidence for your situation, in alignment with local values and your professional expertise
Assess: Evaluate the effectiveness of the application

Generally speaking, the realibility and value placed on different types of information according to an EBP paradigm will be ranked thus:

Image source: JoWilson13. Literature searching for health promotion 2013 (slideshow). Retrieved from http://www.slideshare.net/JoWilson13/literature-searching-for-health-promotion-2013

As you work your way from less- to more-reliable, you will notice that the size of data sets and the evaluations and comparisons within them increase. A meta-analysis will study hundreds or thousands of individual cases, which allows for overarching trends to emerge. Individual case studies may not always enable the researcher to determine which characteristics are typical of similar cases and which characteristics pertain only to that particular case.

Understanding medical sources

The CRAP Method

The C.R.A.P. method is a framework for beginning to evaluate sources. You need to look at the source itself AND do some fact-checking outside the source, too.

¨ Currency—consider:

§ When the source was created or last updated?

§ Is this current enough for your topic (some fields change more rapidly than others)?

¨ Reliability (the content itself)

§ Are the sources of the information documented (cited)?

§ Is the content mostly opinion or mostly verifiable information?

§ Is the source summarizing or re-stating a different source? If so, "go upstream" to that original source and use it, instead.

§ When in doubt, do a quick web search to see if anyone else has already fact-checked the claims.

¨ Authority (the author or creator)

§ Who created this resource?

§ Is the creator an expert on this topic?

§ Does the creator have any institutional affiliations?

§ "Read laterally"-- do some quick searching to find out what others say about the author. What kind of reputation do they have?

¨ Purpose (the publishing source and/or medium)

§ Why was the resource created?

§ Who is the intended audience?

§ Does the publishing source have an agenda? (E.g., are they trying to get you to support a certain candidate or buy a product?)

§ Again, "read laterally"-- do some quick searching to find out what others say about the publication. What kind of reputation does it have?

§ Are there ads? A lot of them?