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- With regard to
health promotion, McQueen and Anderson argue that in fact "evidence" may be
viewed as an "inappropriate" idea. In support of this view, they suggest that
the underlying epistemological base for health promotion is not experimental science but
rather the social and behavioral sciences which by and large, are non-experimental, highly
empirical, and characterized by observation and classification, rather than by any effort
to manipulate the subject of study. Furthermore in those situations where variables are
being purposely manipulated, the design can rarely possess the rigorous structure of an
experiment because of the lack of control over the relevant variables and the inability to
have a control group for comparison. The most we can usually hope for is a
quasi-experimental design - To make things even worse, it has been argued by the WHO
Working Group that a key characteristic of health promotion evaluations is that they
involve "participation" , ideally on an equitable basis, of both researchers and
the researched (http://www.who.dk). According to McQueen
and Anderson,this characterization of health promotion and the attendant assumptions would
make a rigorous experimental design totally inappropriate and, because the term
"evidence" is so closely associated, both historically and in the conceptual
mentality of researchers, with rigorous experimental designs, the use of the term in
health promotion becomes highly questionable. They further argue that the casual use of
the term "evidence" in health promotion presents a challenge because in their
view, it will seriously deflect health promotion practice from concentrating on how best
to design and evaluate interventions |
