Using available clinical information in practice-based research: mining for silver while dreaming of gold

Social workers in health and mental health settings routinely collect and record enormous quantities of clinical information about clients, psycho-social interventions and client responses to these interventions. Despite its abundance and non-intrusiveness, social work researchers generally have ignored available clinical information, claiming that it is unreliable and subject to too many threats to validity to warrant serious consideration as a data source. Instead, many researchers have advocated "gold standard" experimental studies, employing standardized instruments and prospective data-collection. As a result, the research potential of retrospective studies based on available clinical information has been relatively unexplored and untested. This paper asserts that available clinical information can be converted into valuable retrospective, data-bases for practice-based research studies. Exemplars of such studies in health and mental health settings are provided as are guidelines for their conduct.