This article identifies dualisms in the continuing and sometimes acrimonious discourse concerning the relationship between social work practice and research. In so doing, it describes the epistemological assumptions of and differences between evidence-based practice, research-based practice, practice-based research, and reflective practice. In the spirit of the Hong Kong conference, the author extends McNeill's concept of "evidence-informed practice" to suggest a more inclusive and harmonious conception of practice-research integration. The article concludes by considering what such a model might look like.

No abstract

This Statement on Practice Research is a work in progress. It emerges out of deliberations from three international conferences on defining and operationalizing practice research. It seeks to capture both a process and outcome in which practitioners, researchers, service users, and educators collectively engage in a negotiated process of inquiry. One of the goals of this form of research is to place equal emphasis on improving practice and improving services. Practice research also seeks to rebalance the power relations in terms of integrating the voices of service users, service providers, service researchers, and instructors preparing future and current service providers. This third statement emerges out of the most recent international conference in New York City (2012) and continues the construction of the social science and social philosophy foundation of practice research. It seeks to expand the dialogue on practice research to include more international voices while also searching for linkages with the evolving process of defining the mixed methods approach to evidence-informed practice. This Statement provides a platform for the

Challenging the ''bridge metaphor'' theme of this conference, this article contends that current practice-research integration strategies are more like research-to-practice ''pipelines.'' The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the potential of clinical data-mining studies conducted by practitioners, practitioner-oriented PhD students, and methodologically pluralist researchers to promoting a truly collaborative, two-way traffic in evidence-informed knowledge building.

No abstract