Between a rock and a soft place: developmental research and the child advocacy process
UMass Chan Affiliations
Department of PsychiatryDocument Type
Journal ArticlePublication Date
2005-10-20Keywords
Biomedical ResearchChild
Child Psychology
Data Collection
Humans
*Patient Advocacy
Research Design
Psychiatry
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Developmental researchers face a perilous path as they set out to perform research with child advocacy potential. We offer our observations regarding how researchers can navigate the path between science (the "rock") and advocacy (the "soft place"), based on our recent experience as directors of the MacArthur Juvenile Adjudicative Competence Study. Scientific research can be extraordinarily effective in the child advocacy process, but science and advocacy are very different endeavors. Scientific credibility demands impartiality, whereas advocacy is never impartial. For psychological scientists to be effective in conducting research relevant to child advocacy, it is important to maintain our identity as scientists and resist any efforts on the part of others to label this work as advocacy.Source
J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2005 Dec;34(4):619-27. Link to article on publisher's siteDOI
10.1207/s15374424jccp3404_4Permanent Link to this Item
http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14038/45742PubMed ID
16232059Related Resources
Link to Article in PubMedae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1207/s15374424jccp3404_4