Abstract
Keywords
One of the key premises of practice research is strong collaboration between researchers and practitioners. This can help strengthen research-based practice in social work, and increase opportunities for practitioners to conduct research. Research-based development in social work is required to describe, implement, evaluate, and disseminate practices that are effective, efficient, and responsive to clients’ needs. Moreover, engaging practitioners in doing research can bridge the gap between research and practice, as well as democratize knowledge production processes (Deacon, 2023; Kong et al., 2023).
Community academic partnerships (CaPs) involving stakeholders from both academia and practice can facilitate collaboration and increase the impact of research (Isokuortti et al., 2024). These partnerships can help to improve social workers’ skills and increase their motivation and confidence in conducting and applying research. They can also lead to more research-friendly organizational cultures (Isokuortti et al., 2024).
In practice research, practitioners can be part of the research team and either work side by side with the researchers (e.g., Isokuortti et al., 2025), or conduct research of their own. In practitioner research, a study is conducted by the practitioners themselves (Uggerhøj, 2013). Shaw and Lunt (2018) call this practitioner-led research when it is controlled by the practitioner, and in publications, the role of academics is supportive. Practitioner research often focuses on developing or evaluating practices and on utilizing the research outcome (Shaw & Lunt, 2018). Thus, it builds on the values of producing knowledge on program efficacy and strengthening evidence-based social work, and on collaborative, empowering, and antidiscriminatory practices (Lotty, 2021).
The aim of this study was to learn how to strengthen research-based practice and service development. Our interest in the research topic stemmed from our own backgrounds and positions. The first author is an assistant professor of social work practice research at the University of Helsinki, where she teaches and supervises practice research and leads the Helsinki Practice Research Centre. The second author works as a senior specialist at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), where she promotes social service development and practice-based research. She has also conducted practitioner research on service-user participation in service development herself (e.g., Muurinen, 2019). Both authors contributed equally to conducting and reporting this study. The methods section contains a more detailed description of their responsibilities.
Our interest was in how professionals can conduct practitioner research while working in practice. In Finland, as in many countries, practitioner research in social work has been very limited and structures to support it are only emerging. Thus, it is essential to explore practitioners’ experiences to identify the factors affecting them. Our research questions were: (a) What benefits do professionals perceive in practitioner research, and (b) What factors facilitate or hinder conducting research as part of one's practice? The empirical context of our inquiry was a practice research project carried out in Finland as part of a national development program. The research data were collected from two focus group interviews with six professionals, and analyzed using thematic analysis. Next, we discuss the challenges, facilitating factors, and consequences of practitioner research recognized in earlier research.
Challenges, Support, and Consequences of Practitioner Research
Several factors hinder social workers from engaging in practitioner research. Institutional challenges (e.g., funding, lack of incentives for experimentation, or bureaucratization), a research-opposed organization, a lack of management support to create space for research and employee development, or a lack of social support may all present organizational barriers (McBeath & Austin, 2015). High staff turn-over, lack of time, a poor research skills base, and a lack of confidence in one's own skills have also been recognized as key barriers to social workers’ research engagement (Pulman & Fenge, 2023; Wakefield et al., 2022). In hectic work, practitioner research may be considered “an optional extra,” which means it is deprioritized (Lightowler et al., 2018; Power & Dean, 2023). Moreover, social work practitioners often experience research anxiety, despite having the skills to engage in research, and lack symbolic capital, which would be needed in the field of research (Deacon, 2023).
On the other hand, previous research has recognized factors supporting practitioner research, such as social interaction, familiarity with each other, encouraging others, a research-minded culture, management support, and belonging to a research team as facilitating factors (Power & Dean, 2023). In one reflective commentary, the practitioner researchers concluded that even small financial investments can enhance research, when a coordinated network makes research accessible to practitioners (Buck et al., 2023). Previous studies have found that an external mentor can provide important support for practitioners (MacRae et al., 2016; Power & Dean, 2023; Withington et al., 2020).
There is so far only limited research-base on the consequences of practitioner research. Power and Dean (2023) claim that their practitioner research may have improved their organization's reputation, paved the way for future projects, and improved the status of social work in the hospital. In a study of health care practitioners, all nine who completed their projects reported improved research skills and more reflexivity as a practitioner but on the organizational level, only two of the six partner organizations reported any change (Lightowler et al., 2018).
The existing studies on benefits of practitioner research have mainly focused on capacity-building on the level of individual practitioners rather than on organizational-level change or the use of the research findings and knowledge mobilization (Lightowler et al., 2018). For example, the results of a self-reported questionnaire after a 2-year Australian training and mentoring program showed that social workers’ confidence in developing and implementing a research project had improved and their research skills increased (Withington et al., 2020). Similar results were found in a Scottish project: The practitioners claimed that they had learned from the literature in their field and gained research skills (MacRae et al., 2016). In their reflective article on their practitioner research project in health social work, Power and Dean (2023) also describe how conducting practitioner research has improved their research skills, promoted their career development, and impacted their professional identities.
Context: National Practice Research Project
The study focused on the professionals’ experiences of a practice research project carried out in Finland as a part of the national Future Health and Social Services Center program (2020–2023) funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health. The program's main goal was to the improve social and health services at the primary level, as well as service integration. Part of the program involved developing social services and strengthening research-based social welfare. The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) coordinated the program and provided expert support for the local projects of the 22 well-being service counties.
One of the projects supported by THL aimed to create social work practice models to use with working-age people, pilot these in voluntary well-being service counties, and enhance continuous impact assessments as part of clinical work. Twenty different pilots were conducted in 14 of the 22 counties between the fall of 2022 and the spring of 2023.
As part of the project, THL invited professionals working at the well-being service counties to conduct practitioner research studies. Table 1 describes the support that THL provided the participants. In the fall of 2023, a report made up of 11 articles written by the participating well-being service county representatives and five national-level articles was published (Karjalainen et al., 2023). The authors worked as clinical practitioners, developers, and/or managers.
Support for Practitioner Research.
Method
Methodologically, we draw from focus groups, which gather individuals with similar experiences or concerns together to discuss a specific issue with the help of a moderator (Liamputtong, 2011, p. 3). All the authors of the 11 articles published in the national report were invited to participate. Eight of these 23 authors signed up. The research data were collected from two focus group discussions with six participants after a few last-minute cancelations (n = 4 + 2). Even though the number of participants was small and thus this study is of tentative nature, the discussions ended up interactive and rich of content.
At the beginning of the focus group, the participants gave their informed consent to participate and be recorded. The discussion contained questions on their motivation for doing research, its challenging and facilitating factors, and the perceived benefits. The participants also discussed what they had learned from their projects, and how practitioner research could be supported in the future.
Both researchers attended the focus groups. The first author, who had not attended the project and was not familiar with most of the participants, moderated them. The researchers emphasized the importance of sharing all kinds of experiences, even if they were critical of the support received. This was important because the second author had led the project at THL.
The interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). First, each author coded one interview, that is, summarized the data extracts into short sentences and preliminarily grouped the benefits, challenging factors and facilitating factors led by the research questions. The total number of coded data extracts was 167. Next, the second author reviewed the coding and thematized the coded data into main themes and subthemes with a data-driven research strategy. At this stage, the overarching themes were called (a) motivation and views on the significance of conducting research, (b) benefits of conducting practitioner research, (c) factors that facilitate and enable practitioner research, and (d) challenging factors and issues to be addressed. Each overarching theme had two to four main themes. Finally, the first author reviewed the thematization and both authors agreed on the analysis. The results section was written collaboratively in shared writing sessions, which enabled continuous dialog.
The data extracts in the results section have been translated from Finnish into English by the authors. FG1 or FG2 in the end of the citation refers to the number of the focus group. To protect anonymity, we have not differentiated the speakers or included any information on their research topics or work roles.
Results
Significance of Practice Research
The first overarching theme targeted the motivations and views on the significance of conducting practitioner research. The participants found it important that research could help meet their practical need for knowledge and to understand clients’ and professionals’ experiences. They also believed that practitioner research supported service development and proposed that development projects could more often be national and include collaborative research. When a researcher works within the organization, even preliminary results can be communicated in a timely manner and utilized by management to develop services. Otherwise, the results may be too late to be included in organizational planning. We speak about developing practices in close connection with yearly planning and preparing the budget. It's strongly linked to organizational decision-making and can’t be separated from it. So, if you’re not in there to argue about what to do, the ship has sailed, and the budget is done and [your results] weren’t included in it. So, even if you have great results in an article six months later, it's no good for implementing the model anymore. (FG1)
Moreover, the participants found strengthening evidence-informed practice, evaluating its effectiveness, and developing effective services to be highly motivating. They also claimed that recent Finnish social work research helped them better understand research-based implementation and development. The participants considered combining research and the development of new practice models important for obtaining deeper, multiperspective knowledge of their usefulness and impact before wider implementation. [Based on my previous experience] I see it as important that we have a more structured evaluation process, and in the future, hopefully also research, because otherwise it's just like a political game, trying to get them accepted. If they [practice models] were based on actual evaluation and not just on “clients like this” then what's adopted in practice would be based on research. (FG1)
One participant also described how, after the 2023 reform of the social and healthcare system aiming to integrate services, the need for research on the benefits of social work and social care has increased even further. In health care, the roots of evidence-based practice reach deeper, and therefore, the participants believed “yes, we have to go to the same field so we can’t always say ‘well, but in social work it doesn’t work like that’.” (FG2)
To conclude, the participants brought up the significance on practitioner research for understanding clients’ and professionals’ experiences for designing and implementing evidence-based practices which multiperspective knowledge supports. Similarly, previous study on practitioner research has highlighted both values; while practitioner research strengthens program efficacy, it also aims at strengthening collaborative, empowering, and antidiscriminatory practices (Lotty, 2021).
Benefits of Doing Practitioner Research
The second overarching theme focused on the perceived benefits of conducting practitioner research. The participants described how their results were used to develop and implement practices, and how conducting research promoted their personal learning process.
Benefits of conducting practitioner research recognized by the professionals included that they became aware of research gaps, and the research supported the program theory of the national practice models or highlighted the connections between development work and client wellbeing. The pilots provided the opportunity to test what works or helped build supportive structures on a small scale, before wider implementation. One participant described how the practice model was implemented in their county as a permanent practice partly because of the practitioner study. The participants were also happy about the research outputs being published in a national report.
Another benefit was the personal learning process that the participants experienced. Learning new things about their topics and about existing research and learning together with others was inspiring. Participants highlighted that they had learned about social work thematically, learned what evaluation and effectiveness meant in research, and gained research and development skills. They had also learned about themselves and how they operate in practice. Different emotions and lessons were related to the process: And then, on the experiential side what I learned was, I noticed that there are moments of desperation, and then things become clearer again and then, blurred again. So, trusting the process, how it works here, and the next time will work even better. (FG2)
Another participant described how they had gained new conceptualizations of what they were doing, referring to the program theory and how a model can be adapted locally—how their understanding of implementation science had improved.
Another aspect of learning was related to the role of leadership. Some of the participants worked as managers, and as they considered it important to be able to encourage others to continue conducting research, they were able to better engage in reflective discussions on different research topics. In addition to encouraging research, in the future they want to try to create space for small-scale development work. One of the participants described how their thinking had changed: Even though they were not necessarily going to become researchers themselves, they could still try to enable others to do so.
Related to their clinical work, the participants felt that the knowledge they had gained gave them a better understanding of the volume of the client group segments, or at whom to target their work. Understanding the phenomena better helped the team in their clinical work, as it provided a wider perspective of challenging situations.
Finally, taking part in the national practice research process provided peer support and enabled networking and sharing ideas with colleagues in other counties. The meetings revealed similarities in how practitioners operated in different regions, which was encouraging. The participants found this motivating, and some intended to continue collaboration in the future.
The perceived benefits and consequences of engaging in practitioner research support observations in previous literature that emphasizes increased research capacity and skills of individual practitioners (MacRae et al., 2016; Power & Dean, 2023; Withington et al., 2020). The individual-level experiences of increased research and development skills, and new research-based insights of their projects were also brought up by all participants. Such experiences can be significant for becoming a research-minded practitioner (McBeath & Austin, 2015) and to support others, also as a manager. However, more evaluation studies on the changes of organizational-level are needed to observe the quality and successful implementation of practice models supported by practitioner-research.
Facilitating and Enabling Factors
The third overarching theme delves into the factors that facilitate and enable practitioners to conduct research. The participants identified several factors that facilitated and enabled conducting research or research-based development. These factors included support from the national research project, management's and organization's supportive role, collaborative working, research skills and research-friendly operating cultures.
The participants emphasized the role of THL's support and the practice research project as part of the development program. Participation in a larger program inspired them to start conducting research and justified investing time and effort in it. Being part of a national network encouraged to become involved in a research process. The coordinators of the national practice research project took a mentoring role in the practitioner researchers’ smaller studies. The national practice research project provided a timeframe for the studies and facilitated the study process by structuring it into smaller milestones.
The participants received research training in the meetings of the national practice research project. The participants described how these events gave them new knowledge and skills for their practitioner research and helped them develop the theoretical and methodological frame of their studies. It was important that the research training was concrete and concise, and linked to real, ongoing research: “If you just organize training without anything [a link to ongoing research], it just flows like water off a duck's back.” (FG1)
Most of the participants were licensed social workers, which in the Finnish context means they had a master's degree in social work from a university which provided basic research training in social sciences. The research training reactivated knowledge and skills that they might have received during their MSW studies but had not actively used during their years of hectic practical work, which was often detached from research. I felt that working life is quite detached from research, both in reality and in my own head. There's little time and few opportunities to combine research and everyday working life, and I find myself always looking for ways to do more [research or use research-based knowledge] or hoping that we could do something concrete about it. It's something we talk about a lot now, what we could do to fill the gap. (FG2)
The participants emphasized the network of different actors provided by the national project as an enabling factor, as it guaranteed that individual practitioners or their organizations were not left alone with the questions and problems that arose during the process. Being able to ask questions and obtain individual feedback between the workshops was crucial for the successful realization of the practitioner studies. This interactive support could not be replaced by written guides and teaching videos. It was important also for the ethical considerations related to combining research with the practitioner role. Ethical reflection is also something [important]. If you do research on your own work, you need to somehow distinguish between your role as a researcher and your work role when collecting the data. We’ve had support for that, and I feel it's made it easier than if we’d just been given a manual to read. (FG2)
While support from the national project was essential, the participants emphasized also the management's and organizations’ supporting and encouraging role. They appreciated it when managers showed an interest in their practitioner research and gave them permission to use working hours for their study. The latter was crucial for most participants, as without it they would not have been able to conduct their research at all. It was also essential that their colleagues and team members understood that their research required time and attention.
Some managers supported the practitioner studies by reading and commenting on manuscripts and by providing opportunities to disseminate the research results in the organization. Discussing the preliminary results with the team helped to ensure that the team could share the interpretations and conclusions drawn. Similarly, these discussions helped the team reflect on their own work and the areas they needed to develop. The participants emphasized the importance of managers having a sufficient understanding of knowledge management and both the ability and courage to use even critical research results for learning about and developing services.
Moreover, the participants considered collaborative working to be a significant enabling factor of practitioner research. Collaboration with another practitioner researcher made the research work easier from brainstorming and planning the research to conducting literature searches and reporting. Conducting research together and cowriting made completing the project more manageable. Cowriting not only shared the participants’ workload; accountability to a cowriter helped to adhere to jointly agreed-on schedules and enabled reflective discussions. What was extremely good about this [cowriting] was that we had a lot of discussion [with the cowriter] at every point, and it improved the quality of what we were doing. (FG2)
The participants recognized also facilitating factors related to research skills and an operating culture that was supportive of research. Earlier experiences of conducting research inside the organization or knowledge production as a part of structural social work helped the practitioners realize their research projects and be critical of knowledge and its interpretations. Skills that facilitated conducting research as part of practice included the ability to focus, analyze information, find a thread and follow it, and cowrite. All these can be improved through practice.
To conclude, the enabling factors recognized in this study are in line with earlier research's findings on the importance of management support, research-minded culture, collaboration (Power & Dean, 2023), and external mentors (MacRae et al., 2016; Power & Dean, 2023; Withington et al., 2020). Our results also encourage to make even small investments to coordinated research networks (Buck et al., 2023), which can substantially enable practitioner research by providing not only mentoring and research training, but also a structure, timeframe and justification for doing practitioner research and prioritizing it amid hectic practice.
Issues to Be Resolved
The fourth overarching theme covered issues that had to be resolved to improve opportunities for practitioner research. These issues included more research-friendly organizational cultures, work arrangements enabling the partial use of working hours for research, specialists’ support of research work, and macro-level R&D structures.
Often, professionals are more devoted to working with clients than to development or research, and thus research receives very little attention. The role of managers is crucial for creating research-friendly organizational cultures. For example, they can maintain the research focus in team meetings by putting short research reviews on the agenda or discussing client data to enhance knowledge management.
The participants also called for structures that enabled using part of their working hours for research, and specialists’ support. They felt that all their resources were being used for their basic work, but that research was something that required personal passion and often also personal time. Whatever the model, support from the employer and a signal that they understand this is important and you can use work time for it [is crucial]. Now the assumption is that you do everything else too, and [conducting research] depends on your own commitment. (FG2)
As the pace of client work is hectic, combining research and development with it requires arrangements such as devoting one full day per week to research work in another location, such as at the university, and the right to ignore work emails and phone calls that day. The participants of this study identified as one possible solution support received from cowriters or a research group. The cowriters could be also researchers from academia, and practitioner research could be conducted as part of a larger research project.
The research participants felt that macro-level R&D structures were needed in the well-being service counties, which would entail strong expertise in social services as well as research. This could mean, for example, creating dual positions, cofunded by universities and wellbeing service counties, which would enable combining research and education with clinical work. This could also pave the way to partnerships in which a practitioner and a university-based researcher conduct research together and cowrite papers. The participants claimed that realizing this vision would require strong leadership, long-term planning, prioritization, commitment to shared strategic goals, and then tying research projects to these.
Earlier research has suggested that in the future, the focus should be on addressing organizational barriers instead of just enhancing practitioners’ research skills (Power & Dean, 2023). Our results support this. McBeath and Austin (2015) propose different forms of support, including managers modeling practice research by conducting and facilitating it, emphasizing research skills in staff recruitment and training, and enabling sabbaticals and job rotation. Moreover, in creating a supportive organizational culture, the role of managers is significant. When managers have personal research experience and skills, they are better equipped to boost research in their organizations, even if they themselves are no longer engaged in research. Such research-minded managers can model the curiosity, reflectivity, and critical thinking that research-minded practitioners require (McBeath & Austin, 2015).
Discussion and Applications to Practice
The participants of this study were motivated to conduct practitioner research to meet the practical need for knowledge, to enable the development of services, and to strengthen evidence-informed practice. To bridge the gap between research and practice, it is essential that different perspectives are recognized and appreciated in knowledge production. Finnish social workers’ interest in developing effective services, evaluating their effectiveness, and understanding how to ensure successful implementation seems to be growing.
In line with previous research (MacRae et al., 2016; Power & Dean, 2023; Withington et al., 2020) participants of this study reported to have learned about doing research and development, the meaning of effectiveness and implementation, and the role of leadership, as well as about themselves, when conducting practitioner research. Participating in the national practice research project described in this article supported the growth of these professionals into research-minded practitioners. McBeath and Austin (2015) define research-minded practitioners as “individuals with an affinity for empirical inquiry, critical thinking, and reflection allied with a commitment to data-driven organizational improvement.” Research-minded practitioners help identify practice-relevant research questions, analyze existing data, and support practice improvement initiatives.
At the same time, it is important to acknowledge the limitations of this study. The sample was small and the participants covered only a quarter of all the 23 authors whose articles were published in the national report. Those with positive experiences may have been keener to participate, and the results may have been different if we had interviewed development project participants who chose not to or were unable to conduct practitioner research of their own. Moreover, our positions and roles may have created some social bias. To diminish this, we encouraged the participants to also talk about any critical and negative experiences. During the data analysis, our positions as the leader of the project (HM) and as someone who did not participate at all (MJ) provided the opportunity for researcher triangulation and reflecting on different interpretations.
Previous research has claimed that organizational-level impacts may be more challenging to highlight than the impact on individual research skills and learning about one's practice (Lightowler et al., 2018). This also applied in this study, especially because the interviews were conducted only a few months after the projects ended, and no long-term impact could yet be seen. However, one of the participants reported that the practice model had been implemented in their county as a permanent practice partly because of their practitioner study. Pilots provided the opportunity to test what works on a small scale, or to build supportive structures for the wider implementation of the practice models. On a national level, the studies helped refine the program theories. The long-term organizational-level impacts of practitioner research would be an important topic for further research.
Previous research has emphasized that organizational supports is essential for practitioner research (e.g., Power & Dean, 2023). The participants of this study labeled the support from the national practice research program and from managers, through collaboration, and an organizational culture that promoted research as enabling factors for practitioner research. However, they also called for more research-friendly organizational cultures, work arrangements enabling the partial use of working hours for research, specialists’ support of their research work, and stronger R&D structures. Support for practitioner researchers needs to be systematic and provided over a sufficiently long period.
In providing organizational support for practitioner research, CaPs are essential (Isokuortti et al., 2024). Collaboration with academia can bring weight to practitioner research and provide an important foundation (MacRae et al., 2016), as the participants of this study also highlighted. Like our study, previous research has found step-by-step support, mentoring and discussions with coparticipants to be significant enabling factors, facilitating learning and supporting the completion of projects (MacRae et al., 2016; Withington et al., 2020).
Our research participants were motivated to develop evidence-informed practices. However, developing and evaluating the effectiveness of a practice is a challenging task that requires time, skills, and resources. As our data also showed, Shaw and Lunt (2018) found that practitioner research is mainly qualitative and often conducted alone. Developing an intervention and evaluating its effectiveness requires a multimethod approach and is therefore more realistically carried out through academic partnerships in which practitioners collaborate with researchers or perhaps lead a smaller substudy.
In Finland, CaPs can be built either regionally, as in the case of Helsinki Practice Research Centre, or nationally, like the project studied in this article. In both cases, the challenge is sustaining the development and evaluation process over the long term, especially if research funding is temporary and staff turnover is high. This leads to strategic planning and research funding issues. One option for practice research and practitioner research would be to link it more firmly to the strategic goals and development priorities of the well-being service counties. We argue that in the future, practice research should be a systematic part of service development, from the very beginning.
This would help to develop practices that are designed from the bottom-up and are therefore applicable and appropriate for practice. To enhance client-centeredness in service development, future research should also explore how to create supportive structures that enable meaningful service user participation in practitioner-led research.
Footnotes
Consent
All research participants have given their informed consent. The research has followed the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK), according to which an external ethical approval process was not needed.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
