Evidence-Based Practice in an Age of Relativism: Toward a Model for Practice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Evidence-based practice (EBP) is considered a hallmark of excellence in clinical practice. However, many social workers are uncertain about how to implement this approach to practice. EBP involves integrating clinical expertise and values with the best available evidence from systematic research while simultaneously considering the client's values and expectations--all within the parameters of the agency mandate and any legislative or environmental considerations. This article explores the feasibility of EBP and attempts to steer a course between those who advocate an EBP model that may appear unachievable to many clinicians and those who dismiss it outright on philosophical grounds. Five areas that affect the feasibility of EBP are explored: misconceptions about EBP, confusion about philosophical issues, questions about the quality of evidence needed to support EBP, substantive knowledge domains required for practice, and issues related to knowledge transfer and translation. An important theme of this analysis is the central role of clinical judgment in all aspects of EBP.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.247 | 0.211 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.016 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.181 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.038 | 0.067 |
| Open science | 0.010 | 0.030 |
| Research integrity | 0.018 | 0.029 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".