• What is research?
• Defining research mindedness
• Are you research minded?
• Qualifying standards
• Global standards
• Learning pathways
• Research and practice
• Why carry out research?
• Underuse of research
• Research for understanding
• Research for decision making
• Research for changing practice
• Knowledge, research and practice: a contentious relationship?
• Forging new relationships?

Why carry out research in social care organisations?

In contemporary social care it is now expected that organisations will be research-minded and this means using, commissioning and/or carrying out research in a variety of forms.

At an abstract level the answer to the question ‘why carry out research?’ is likely to be along the lines of - 'to advance knowledge, increase understanding and to evaluate effectiveness'. More specifically reasons may include:

• To evaluate day to day practice within teams, with a focus on the usefulness and outcomes of different forms of service provision and intervention.
  
• For internal monitoring and evaluation by organisations to improve efficiency or productivity, or find ways of making savings.
  
• To improve 'consumer relations', perhaps linked to a Citizen’s charter or to agency policies about how service users should be treated.
  
• To contribute to staff appraisal and development processes.
  
• To review and update existing information or to fill gaps. Information is now viewed as a vital resource in the personal social services and, with the arrival of computers and telecommunications, organisations are expected to be 'information-rich', with staff able to have access to a range of information at their fingertips.
  
• To feed into national policy review and development.

Much of this information is not gathered as part of a formal research process, but rather through routine casework in settings that are, through advances in information technology, increasingly information-rich and for which there is a need for greater accountability.