In God I trust, all others use data

In general I am a cynical or at best, skeptical, individual. ”In God I trust, all others use data” captures the ‘prove it to me’ attitude I try to take in both my personal and professional life. I am not always successful, but I keep this evidence-based focus as my goal.

Therefore, it is with this trepidation that I am entering the world of business blogs. To be honest, I am just beginning to read blogs and still don’t quite get the purpose business blogs serve. For me a practice must meet two criterion. First, it must be effective (i.e., solve the issue I am addressing). Second, it must be relevant (i.e., be the best fit for the situation).

Many years ago, Montrose Wolf, provided three guidelines for determine the relevance of a practice. That is, are the practices and services you provide meaningful to the people you serve? One way to find the answer is by asking yourself the three questions:

o Are the goals of your practice socially significant?
o Are the procedures of your service socially appropriate?
o Are the effects of your work socially important?

Making sure your practices are significant, appropriate and important is only half the task; the other half relates to efficacy of these practices/services, or to put it another way, are you using the best approaches available? That brings me back to the title and the desire to choose a method that not only works but also works well.

How do you currently choose what approach to take or what strategy to use?
(a) Do you go with your gut feeling?
(b) Follow the opinions of friends and coworkers?
(c) Do what you’ve done before, is familiar?
(d) Pick a strategy that fits your personal style?
(e) Stick to what your organization always does?
(f) Follow the advice of an expert?
(g) Or, do you rely on empirical evidence?

Research shows that people report different standards for their own professional decisions and those they want their physicians to use. For instance in Gambrill and Gibbs (2002), 92% of participants want their physicians to use approaches supported by empirical research. However, when making decisions about how to work with their own clients, these same people tended to base decisions on their own intuition (77%).

What do you when making personal choices? Is this different from making professional choices?

Where does that leave me with blogging? I’m approaching blogging with something between guarded skepticism and guarded optimism while beginning to collect my own data. I’m looking at the responses to this blog, reading other people’s blogs and looking for studies that support not only activity of blogging but provide guidelines on using a strategy that maximizes meaning for the people we serve I’ll keep you posted to what I find and welcome any thoughts or suggests from fellow cynics and/or avid users. Has blogging impacted your business or life? How? Let us know.

Enjoy the weekend,

Teri

For further reading, see:

Gambrill, E. & Gibbs, L. (2002). Making practice decisions: Is what’s good for the goose good for the gander. Ethical Human Sciences and Services, 4(1), p. 39.

Wolf, M. (1978). Social validity: The case for subjective measurement or how applied behavior analysis is finding its heart. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 11, 203-214.