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This chapter discusses the use of community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods in conducting research on the effectiveness, dissemination, and implementation of evidence-based practices. It begins with a presentation of the principles and practice of CBPR in public health and social work. The use of qualitative and mixed methods in such projects is then profiled, along with a case study of an intervention strategy designed to prevent substance abuse and delinquent behavior in children and adolescents. We then turn to an examination of the challenges involved in using a CBPR approach, including the tensions between academic and community-based partners, differences in organizational cultures, and concerns about the scientific rigor of CBPR methods. We offer solutions to this challenge in the form of a paradigm that promotes cultural exchange among translational research stakeholders. We conclude with a presentation of the infrastructure requirements for using this methodological approach.

This final chapter summarizes the main themes of the book and discusses how these themes are linked together to articulate a strategy for conducting translational research. Four themes are summarized: the relationship between translational research and research translation; the interrelationships among process, outcomes, and context of research translation; the agency or organization as the locus of research; and the use of mixed-methods designs and community-based participatory research methods in conducting translational research. Cultural exchange is presented as a strategy for engaging in translational research. Whether it is an exchange between researchers representing different academic disciplines or methodological approaches, or an exchange between researchers and practitioners, cultural exchange is as fundamental to research translation as it is to translational research. Cultural exchange is also the mechanism by which translational research becomes transformative. The chapter concludes with a set of recommendations for developing the research infrastructure and advancing the field.

This chapter reviews the latest methods in research on the process and outcomes of research translation in social work practice. First, we examine some of the principles and practices of translational research. A case study of an ongoing randomized controlled trial of an EBP implementation strategy in child welfare offers an illustration of how to conduct research on process and outcomes. We then examine some of the challenges involved in conducting translational research, including the identification of specific concepts and measurement procedures for each form of translation, consideration of the dynamic nature of the EBP/translation process, constraints imposed on sample size by the organizational context of translation, engagement of all relevant stakeholders in the conduct of research, and the limitations inherent in randomized controlled trial designs. We conclude with a discussion of infrastructure requirements for conducting translational research, with particular attention to staffing, research–community partnerships, and participant compensation.

This chapter considers the methodological challenges and strategies at the organizational level of the translation process. Organizational factors include organizational structure, culture and climate, work attitudes, leadership, social influences, and readiness or support for innovation. We review the quantitative and qualitative methods used to examine these associations and to influence the process of translating research into practice. The challenges to conducting translational research resulting from these associations are examined, along with a case study of a statewide randomized clinical trial of the effectiveness of an evidence-based practice designed to reduce child neglect and out-of-home placements by child welfare agencies. A mixed-methods study conducted in parallel with the effectiveness trial highlights the effects of the participating agencies on EBP implementation and the reciprocal effects of EBP implementation on the culture and climate of the agencies. Finally, suggestions for developing the infrastructure for conducting such research are offered.

Mixed-methods research refers to the integrated use of quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study or project. Mixed-methods designs are considered to be particularly appropriate for conducting translational and implementation research for reasons that are presented in this chapter. We begin with a definition of mixed methods and explain that studies that use quantitative and qualitative methods independently do not necessarily qualify as mixed-methods designs. We also discuss the reasons why mixed methods are especially useful in translational and implementation research. We then introduce a taxonomy of the structure, function, and process for using mixed methods and present a case study to illustrate the various ways in which quantitative and qualitative methods may be combined and the reasons for combining them. We conclude with a discussion of the challenges in using mixed methods and the infrastructure necessary to support their use.

Chapter 6 describes the transformation of Belarusian post-Chernobyl research efforts, from the systematic development of radiological research infrastructures in the last years of the Soviet Union to massive restructuring and reframing of Chernobyl-related research ten years later, as a result of changing political and economic interests of the Belarusian government. Infrastructural disruptions to data collection and analysis created the conditions for research relying on theoretically, rather than empirically, driven approaches, and this bias supports minimizing the scope of Chernobyl-related health effects. The chapter observes that restructuring and reframing of Chernobyl-related research led to the near disappearance of the radiation factor as an object of inquiry, and to the greater invisibility of local experts who would claim expertise in the health effects of radiation exposure due to the Chernobyl accident.

Linking practice with evidence through payment policy will increase the value we get for the dollars we expend on medical care. But vast uncertainties exist in medicine. How should we proceed when valid evidence about the benefits and harms of an intervention or course of action does not yet exist? Under conditions of uncertainty of the value of a health service, the best way to protect the interests of both payers as well as patients is to reduce the uncertainty. Payment models like Medicare’s coverage with evidence development incentivize the reduction of uncertainty in medicine through participation in research. These arrangements give the patient access to the item or service in return for contributing to an evidence base. Hearts, minds, and processes must be changed if we are to realize the vision of making evidence generation an inseparable part of the medical interactions that occur in routine clinical practice.

This chapter broadens out the focus from Irish sociology to examine Irish scientific research. Its central theme is the way in which resources provided or jointly controlled by US actors underpinned the development of a modern scientific research infrastructure within the state in the period after the Second World War. The scientific fields principally affected by these financial injections were applied research related to agriculture, industry and economics. Money flowed into these fields from two major sources: the Grant Counterpart Fund, which was a legacy of Ireland’s participation in the Marshall Plan, and private US foundations. In other fields, such as management and `human sciences’, significant resource transfers took place in kind as much as in cash through productivity and technical assistance programmes. The infrastructure developments that clustered in the late 1950s and the early 1960s interacted with older scientific institutional configurations laid down under the Union with Britain and subjected to emaciating neglect after the advent of political independence.

Chapter 5 returns the focus to the social sciences. The injection of resources into Ireland’s scientific research infrastructure at the end of the 1950s created two new social science research producers – the Rural Economy Division of An Foras Taluntais and the Economic Research Institute. In the former rural sociology took a recognised place alongside a variety of other agriculture-relevant disciplines. In the latter the distinction between the economic and the social was a blurred and indistinct one. During the first half 1960s the unenclosed field of social research was to be the subject of a series of proposals from actors located within the Catholic social movement to a variety of government departments for the creation of research centres or institutes. This chapter details these proposals and the fate of consistent refusal with which they met. Empirical social research in Ireland was funded and organised in a manner that effectively excluded the participation of any Catholic social movement actor without a university base when the government approved the transformation of the Economic Research Institute into the Economic and Social Research Institute. This approval for a central social research organisation was crucially linked to the project of extending the scope of government programming to encompass social development as well as economic expansion.

Through examination of the activities of the X-men within scientific societies this chapter reveals much about the mundane operation of scientific societies, their characteristic organisational structure, the roles of officers, and Victorian expectations as to the roles appropriate to persons of different social statuses. The concerns of the X-men were chiefly with the public image of science, that science be dignified and socially respected, judged by scientific criteria alone. Their specifically professionalizing concerns focused on building the infrastructure for scientific research. They devoted considerable effort to getting themselves elected to high positions in the Royal Society, and ensuring that high birth was no longer a criterion for the presidency. In the Ethnological Society of London, Lubbock, Busk and Huxley sought both scientific and social respectability for the science of man. They succeeded in reuniting the squabbling Ethnological and Anthropological Societies, and in holding the amalgamated Anthropological Institute together. By contrast, in the Linnean Society Hooker lost his long control, largely because Busk and Lubbock refused to act as his lieutenants. Through the British Association they shaped public opinion more widely, using public lectures and presidential addresses to interpret the tendencies and directions of modern science to large audiences.