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Using Decision Analysis: Connecting Classroom and Field
Abstract
This paper reports on the findings of a small-scale research project investigating the views of social work students on the use of decision analysis. After giving the context of the research, the article reports on what was found when students, who had just completed a Decision Making and Risk module, were asked for their opinions on the component parts of decision analysis, its use as a practice tool and their attitudes to using it on placement. The research found that the respondents in general took a critical and supportive stance towards the use of decision analysis in social work and, with extra teaching and a positive approach from their practice assessor, would be happy to use decision analysis. When the same group of students completed a follow-up questionnaire on a placement recall day, half of them had thought about using decision analysis but only three had gone on to discuss this with their practice assessors. Some issues in relation to connecting 'classroom' and 'field' are identified and the paper concludes that a number of further steps would be necessary to realise the potential of decision analysis to help students be more systematic and analytical in their approach to decision making.
... Is public protection the enemy of good risk management for individuals (Carson & Bain, 2008)? An added complexity is that the role of the criminal justice social worker/probation officer also changes, both between and within practice situations (O'Sullivan, 2008). ...
‘Risk’ has become a central concept for social work practice in countries with more developed social welfare systems. As argued by Hazel Kemshall and colleagues, ‘risk’ has often replaced ‘need’ as the main driver for social work interventions as societies seek to avoid harm to citizens. This shift of focus raises a tension between care (support for the individual or family in their own right) and control (seeking to prevent harm to themselves, each other or other citizens). This article considers some of the key developments in the 25 years since the above article, including the development of risk communication; the growing familiarity with both likelihood and severity concepts of risk; the assessment of risk as part of organisational arrangements to manage risk; and theoretical developments linking social work assessment, ‘working with risk’ and decision-making. In the first part of the article, we explore the care versus control boundary through focussing, in turn, on child and family social work, adult care services, mental health social work and criminal justice social work, and their respective developments. We then further extend two key foci regarding assessment and care planning as well as the use of professional knowledge at the care and control boundary. Our analysis of these developments points towards more nuanced approaches to managing risk and making decisions at these sometimes contentious boundaries.
A defining concept for higher education has been that of critical thinking but it is (a) being lost from view, (b) characteristically impoverished even where it is to be glimpsed, and (c) in any case inadequate for the challenges of the twenty-first century. 'Higher Education: A Critical Business' interrogates the idea of critical thinking and offers a new way of conceptualising it, broadening it out to incorporate 'critical action' and 'critical being' in advancing a new idea of 'criticality'. (It is believed that this was the first book in which the term - 'criticality' - first appeared as a concept central to higher education - and this book has come to be one of the most significant texts in the philosophy of higher education, influencing professional fields as well as higher education itself.)
Many decisions are based on beliefs concerning the likelihood of uncertain events such as the outcome of an election, the guilt of a defendant, or the future value of the dollar. Occasionally, beliefs concerning uncertain events are expressed in numerical form as odds or subjective probabilities. In general, the heuristics are quite useful, but sometimes they lead to severe and systematic errors. The subjective assessment of probability resembles the subjective assessment of physical quantities such as distance or size. These judgments are all based on data of limited validity, which are processed according to heuristic rules. However, the reliance on this rule leads to systematic errors in the estimation of distance. This chapter describes three heuristics that are employed in making judgments under uncertainty. The first is representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event belongs to a class or event. The second is the availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development, and the third is adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available.
This paper focuses on the Department of Health (2002) statement that academic knowledge should be used to support practice learning. Debates around linking theory and practice and knowledge as product and process are discussed. The particular emphasis is on critically analysing whether academic knowledge about learning styles - a form of 'process knowledge' – can be effectively utilised and therefore relevant to supporting the process of practice teaching. A small-scale qualitative research study with practice teachers andstudents is presented as a way of exploring this. The findings of this research suggest that information about learning styles can be of practical relevance to practice teachers in promoting effective student learning. The key finding here is that its relevance isdetermined primarily by how such knowledge is utilised in practice. It is crucial whether practice teachers perceive information about their student's learning styles asproduct knowledge (something they possess but do not necessarily employ) or process knowledge (something which usefully describes part of the process they are engaged in).
The author aims to advance the theoretical understanding of practice wisdom by presenting three propositions in relation to its nature and process. A model of practice wisdom is constructed that seeks to address some issues of critical, accountable and knowledge-based practice, while retaining its flexible, creative and intuitive use of practice knowledge.
Findings: It is argued that a critical, accountable and knowledge-based practice wisdom requires distinctive knowledge production processes, the ability to make reasoning explicit, and credible and valuable knowledge. Models of experienced practice development are needed if social work educators are to effectively facilitate the growth of practice wisdom. Such models will need to set out a framework of how such factors as disposition towards knowledge, professional education, practice experience and practice contexts influence whether practitioners engage in wise practice.
Applications: The article makes a contribution to the debate about the nature of social work practice and how entrants to social work can become effective practitioners. Practitioners, researchers and social work educators can use the presented framework to review their thinking about the nature of social work practice and the place practice wisdom has in contemporary social work.
• Summary: This article on evidence-based practice and decision analysis develops an implementation model for social work. Thus far no detailed attempt has been made to formulate a systematic implementation framework for evidence-based practice in social work.
• Findings: The social and cultural, the professional and practice-based, and the educational and training contexts are highlighted. The emergence of evidence-based practice is placed within the context of risk society and the development of new expert systems that contribute to a radical re-shaping of social work practice. In the inevitable shift towards an actuarial practice, direct and therapeutic involvement with service users becomes less significant for social work. Following the work of Trinder (2000) two key approaches to evidence-based practice are discussed: the experimental and pragmatic perspectives.
• Application: By drawing on the latter, a systems approach is developed via nine key related structures which constitute an implementation framework for evidence-based practice.