[Adta] Ramblings!

[Heather Hill]

Hi Susan!
I thought I would accept your invitation to do some rambling on the subject of research, specifically the notion of evidence-based practice.  I guess I just want to raise some issues/questions which I think are important for dance therapy.

The idea of "evidence-based" practice has been and still is the buzz word in the health field particularly and it is clear that for survival if nothing else, we have to address the need for research to underwrite our practice, if we are to maintain and increase the practice of dance therapy - if we are to find jobs, in fact!  

I support strongly the idea of research in our field - we need have no fear that questioning our work will result in negative findings!  However, the problem for dance therapy, as I see it, is that the "evidence" talked about generally signifies evidence on someone else's terms, invariably a biomedical/natural sciences standard of measurement.  This is always going to make it difficult for us, since applying "pill" methodologies to dance therapy (ie trying to isolate the "treatment", talking in terms of cause and effect, requiring large numbers to show "significance", etc) is bound to disadvantage us.   - indeed you can be sure that the standards of proof for something as "alternative" as dance therapy is likely to be higher than for traditional, accepted practice. Yet for pragmatic reasons, we do need to find ways to demonstrate the effectiveness of the work - for our employers, for funding bodies and so on.  That's part of the current reality.

So the question for me is how do we deal with this.  Do we focus on developing evidence in scientific terms, or can we develop other methods which can capture what dance therapy actually achieves but still serve to "prove" to the relevant authorities that dance therapy is a bona fide therapy.  Also, I would like to think that we do not focus our entire research efforts on supplying evidence, but also explore our work more fully and seek understanding within this very rich field that we work in.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts and I welcome further "ramblings" from others.  This is very much a work in progress.

Kind regards,
Heather
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