Session Information
08 SES 05, Discourses of Evidence and Evaluation within Health Education and Health Promotion
Paper Session
Contribution
Against the background of resurgent positivism and post positivism in health education research, this paper aims to critically consider the notion of evidence in relation to health education research. The aim is to generate new layers of insight about the following questions: what counts as evidence; which evidence questions are asked? which knowledge is construed as evidence – and through which methodologies?
We explore tensions between the predominant criteria used in traditional systematic reviews, which emphasize a narrow concept of evidence on the one hand, and the criteria emerging from more recent, narrative reviews that reinterpret the category of evidence but also the very conceptions of data, method, legitimate knowledge etc, on the other. Further, we discuss a typology outlining two epistemological and methodological positions in evidence production and in the evidence debate: (a) “what works”, and (b) “what works, for whom, in which circumstances and how does it work”. The first position focuses on effects and the second, emerging position, considers effects, but also related processes and their contextual nature.
A distinction is made between (a) representational epistemologies, related to the first position, where true knowledge is seen as an exact representation of how things are in the world, unaffected by the knower; and (b) transactional epistemologies, related to the second position, where knowledge is seen as relational and inter-subjective and where the object of knowledge is changed in the process (Biesta, 2010) . Related to each of these epistemologies are the differences between research methodologies, for instance between traditional experimental designs such as RCT (randomized control trials) on the one hand, and qualitative designs, e.g. case studies and field research.
We argue that “desirable knowledge” that could count as evidence in health education research needs to embrace integrated knowledge about outcomes, contexts, processes, as well as participants perspectives on these, and that questions of effectiveness always needs to be related to the purpose in education, to educational values.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
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