Does Probation Officers’ Reasoning Change in the Light of Scientific Evidence? Analyzing the Quality of Evidence Utilisation in Social Work

ABSTRACT

Purpose: This study investigates how social work novices and experts use different knowledge types when solving a problem from professional practice and at what quality level they do so.

Method: 21 social work students and 24 probation officers were confronted with a practice vignette. After thinking aloud about this problem, they were presented with a research summary that included scientific evidence related to this problem and asked to continue to think aloud.

Results: Content analysis and mixed-design ANOVAs revealed that experts and novices rely on significantly different kinds of evidence. Experts have more skills to integrate the presented scientific evidence with other kinds of evidence. Regarding the use of specific kinds of evidence, the expertise level does not interact with the presentation of a research summary. Descriptively, experts use scientific evidence in a more sophisticated way.

Discussion: Social work expertise might lead to specific strategies on how to solve practical problems.

Conclusion: We conclude with suggestions for research and social work education.

KEYWORDS:

• Knowledge utilisation
• expertise
• evidence-based practice
• social work
• probation service

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Elite Network of Bavaria under Grant K-GS-2012-209. We are very grateful for the support of Dr. András Csanadi in terms of coding training and reliability testing.

Disclosure Statement

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Elitenetzwerk Bayern [K-GS-2012-209].