Is Psychological Research Producing the Kind of Knowledge Clinicians Find Useful?

The science–practice gap is a barrier to evidence-based health care. We sought to examine the match between the kinds of studies done by clinical psychology researchers and the kinds of evidence practicing clinicians find useful. We reviewed the prevalence of research questions on how people differ from one another (between-person) and how people differ from their own averages across time (within-person) in six high-impact clinical psychology journals and compared results with a survey of 164 practicing clinicians who rated the importance of between- and within-person questions for their work. Whereas researchers focus mostly on between-person questions, clinicians are at least—and in some cases more—interested in within-person questions. This could pose a challenge for science–practice integration as the clinical community may feel as though the research evidence being produced is not as relevant as it could be, and the scientific community in turn might feel as though practice in the clinical community is not sufficiently evidence based.