Prospectus

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Foundations for Evidence-Based Practice in Clinical Developmental Psychology

Course
2024-2025

Entry requirements

This course is only open to students of the Research Master’s programme Psychology.

Description

This course will train students in evidence-based practice in clinical developmental psychology, which requires the integration of the best research evidence, with clinical expertise and youngster’s unique values and circumstances. To solve social and scientific challenges related to well-being of children and young people, students will critically reflect on how different levels of expertise (scientific, professional, experience) can and need to be used to translate research findings into practice. By taking societal challenges related to well-being of children and young-people as starting point (e.g., social constraints during COVID-19 and the effects on mental well-being of children; smartphone (ab)use among young people and academic success), students will need to critically evaluate the contribution of scientific evidence (including various (clinical) research designs) and contrast this to relevance, utility, effectiveness, generalizability in practice.
Next, this course will specifically address day-to-day ethical challenges in clinical practice, policy, and research and will encourage students to reflect on the impact of valuing the different levels of expertise on evidence-based practice in translating research into practice.

Course objectives

At the end of the course, the student:

  • Can critically assess relevance and quality of recent research findings about the etiology, prevention, and intervention of mental health problems in children and young people for possible translation in clinical practice;

  • Can deduct the psychological and social relevance of recent findings in clinical child and adolescent psychology;

  • Can communicate with professionals working with children and young people about the relevance and quality of research about the etiology, prevention, and intervention of mental health problems in children and young people;

  • Can use systematic evidence acquisition to answer a case-based question related to clinical child and adolescent psychology;

  • Can reflect on ethical dilemmas both in research and everyday clinical and other professional setting

Timetable

For the timetable of this course please refer to MyTimetable

Registration

Education

Students must register themselves for all course components (lectures, tutorials and practicals) they wish to follow. You can register up to 5 days prior to the start of the course.

Exams

You must register for each exam in My Studymap at least 10 days before the exam date. You cannot take an exam without a valid registration in My Studymap. Carefully read all information about the procedures and deadlines for registering for courses and exams.

Exchange students and external guest students will be informed by the education administration about the current registration procedure.

Mode of instruction

The course will consist of 7 interactive working sessions. The workgroups will be focused on a current challenge in society and/or clinical practice related to wellbeing of children and young people and will focus on how evidence-based practice can help solving the problem. In the second half of the interactive workgroups, students will dive into different societal and clinical cases to bring evidence-based practice into practice.

Attendance at sessions is mandatory. See Brightspace for more information.

Assessment method

  • Presentation on the implications of recent clinical research findings to healthcare professionals (30%)

  • Assignment: writing a report on a clinical question via systematic evidence acquisition (70%)

The Institute of Psychology follows the policy of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences to systematically check student papers for plagiarism with the help of software. All students are required to take and pass the Scientific Integrity Test with a score of 100% in order to learn about the practice of integrity in scientific writing. Students are given access to the quiz via a module on Brightspace. Disciplinary measures will be taken when fraud is detected. Students are expected to be familiar with and understand the implications of this fraud policy.

Reading list

To be announced on brightspace

Contact information

Mw. Dr. A. (Anika) Bexkens, a.bexkens@fsw.leidenuniv.nl