Efforts to Bridge the Gap between Research and Practice in Social Work: Precedents and Prospects: Keynote Address at the Bridging the Gap Symposium

This keynote address discusses previous and ongoing efforts to reduce the persistent gap between research and practice in social work and offers recommendations for further bridging that gap. Key among those recommendations is the need to conduct descriptive outcome studies of efforts to adapt research-supported interventions in everyday practice settings to develop a database of case studies that can be analyzed to ferret out the factors associated with variations in client outcomes. These studies would have additional value in bridging the gap by showing agencies whether the intervention they adapted is as effective in their setting and with their clients as they hoped it would be and whether they might need to tweak it or replace it. The keynote address also discusses ways to incentivize academia-based researchers to conduct such studies and the impact of pressure on them to obtain major research funding.