ABSTRACT
Michael Rustin (2001) highlights the way in which clinicians reflexively discount the work they do as research, reminding us of alternative ways of considering what features we deem ‘evidence’, and by implication the research designs we then construct. Speaking about the field of psychotherapy research, Alan Kazdin (2003) points out that despite the considerable progress made in psychotherapy outcome research with children, we are faced with significant gaps in our understanding:
Despite the progress fundamental questions remain about therapy and its effects . . . a great deal of concern in contemporary research focuses on the extent to which treatment effects obtained in research generalize to practice. Because we do not understand why or how most treatments
work, we do not know which facets of treatment are particularly important to clinical practice.
