How poor must one be to be considered poor? The role of research in social-work practice. Find out how to be featured in our future issues

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1 SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE 03 How poor must one be to be considered poor? 08 The role of research in social-work practice ISSUE 2 JUL Find out how to be featured in our future issues

2 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 2 Welcome to Issue 2 of the SSR Snippet This issue contains two articles that are timely and we are sure will be of interest and relevance to anyone concerned with current social issues and the foundations for thinking about and utilizing research data for policy and practice. The first article on the definitions and measurements of poverty globally and locally was on the schedule for publication at least 6 months ago. Though unplanned it is now such a timely piece to add to the basket of views on the recent debate on poverty in Singapore (e.g. Bertha Henson in berthahenson.wordpress.com; Mohamad Maliki Osman and Sudha Nair in msfconversations.wordpress.com). Irene Y. H. Ng s article is insightful, richly informed by data from a variety of sources and presents a challenge to both policy makers and social service providers (and society as a whole) on understanding who are the poor and what it means to label a group as poor in Singapore. It is a must read for everyone who cares about how Singapore is developing as a caring society. The report on the public lecture presented by Ian Shaw, S R Nathan Professor in Social Work, NUS, on research in social work and the role and challenges that exist in the partnership between practitioners and academics in research is crucial and timely in view of the growing interest in practice research. The relevance of the issues raised may even extend beyond social work to other academic and professional disciplines concerned with research, practice and policy. The public lecture covered questions such as the relationship between research and practice; the juxtaposition of quantitative and qualitative research; the pros and cons of evidencebased practice; and, how to develop meaningful conversations when practitioners, policy makers and academics are engaged in the tensions surrounding such debates in the search for truth and reality. Happy reading and remember the call to submit a paper for future issues on your research or projects in Singapore. Details are on page 10 of this issue. We are actively looking for articles for early 2019 publication! With warm regards, Rosaleen Ow Editor C O N T A C T U S NUS Social Service Research Centre Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences National University of Singapore Ventus (University Campus Infrastructure) 03-01, 8 Kent Ridge Drive Singapore ssr@nus.edu.sg E D I T O R I A L Rosaleen Ow Editor Joyce Y. Lim Editorial Assistant Irene Y. H. Ng Advisor C O N T R I B U T O R S Irene Y. H. Ng Associate Professor of Social Work, NUS Goh Guan Zhen Student, M. Social Work, NUS I M A G E C R E D I T S Unsplash/Jennifer Burk Unsplash/Andisheh A

3 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 3 DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY Irene Y. H. Ng Many Singaporeans do not think that poverty exists in Singapore. This might be because Singaporeans think of poverty as extreme deprivation experienced by malnourished and dying children in poor countries. Compared to such visualizations of poverty, a Singaporean household living in a highly subsidized rental flat with a monthly income of $1,000 does not appear poor. How financially strapped must one be to be considered poor? This article gives an overview of poverty definitions and measures around the world. It then considers their relevance to the Singapore context, and offers estimates of poverty rates in Singapore. These estimates are only estimates because one will need accurate information on things such as price indices by household type and size. Such data is unavailable in Singapore. Monetary Poverty The World Bank (2005a) defines poverty as pronounced deprivation in well-being. At the most basic level, poverty is viewed in monetary terms, whether you have or do not have enough money. The threshold of what is enough (or not enough) is determined according to a basket of goods, which might be a minimum food and nutrition standard or in terms of basic needs such as food, clothing and shelter. The threshold is often measured in terms of income in developed countries and in terms of consumption in developing countries. The difference is mainly due to ease of data collection. In developed countries, most incomes are from employment income which is more stable and paid regularly. However, in developing countries, many people receive irregular incomes. With consumption smoothing, consumption expenditure might be a better reflection of permanent income. It is also argued that the incidence of irregular income is also high among poor households in developed countries, and thus a consumption measure might better reflect their purchasing power. They might also receive subsidies which earned income does not reflect. Thus, the World Bank prefers measuring consumption poverty, although a problem with measuring consumption poverty is that frugality could be mistaken as poverty (World Bank, 2005b). Absolute Poverty The poverty threshold can be absolute or relative. Absolute poverty occurs when the amount of money one has falls below a predetermined level set by the state, or an official or authoritative body. For example, in 2015, the World Bank set $1.90 per day (in 2011 purchasing power parity) as the international poverty line, which the United Nations has also adopted as the extreme poverty threshold in its Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to end poverty (World Bank, 2015a; United Nations, n.d.). The level reflects the line below which a person s minimum nutritional, clothing and shelter needs cannot be met (World Bank, 2015b). This is an inflation-adjusted amount from the $1.25 a day that was set for the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) in the 1990s (UNDP 2016; United Nations, n.d.). The target of the MDG to half extreme poverty by 2015 was reached ahead of time, and now the SDG aims to reduce extreme poverty to below 3% by The official poverty line in the United States of America (USA) is also absolute. It is set at three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, updated annually for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) (Semega, Fontenot, & Kollar, 2017). In 2016, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $24,399, giving an official national poverty rate of 12.7 percent. Relative Poverty Relative poverty looks at a person s position relative to others. It generally means that a person can t afford an ordinary living pattern they are excluded from the activities and opportunities that the average person enjoys (Full Fact, 2018). For example, The Organization of Economic Development (OECD) applies 0.5 of median income as the poverty threshold, thus allowing for easy comparison between countries. In the European Union and the United Kingdom, the relative poverty threshold is set higher at 0.6 of current median income. Interestingly, the United Kingdom then bases its current absolute poverty threshold on the relative measure by setting its absolute level as 0.6 of the median income in 2010/11. This fixes a constant threshold while still keeping to the principle of comparison to the rest of the population. In 2016/17, this absolute poverty rate was 14% without housing costs and 19% with housing costs (GOV.UK National Statistics, 2018). Closer to home, in 2013, Hong Kong set its poverty line at 0.5 of median income. In 2016, the rate was 19.9% (14.7% after government transfers), which is virtually the same in the last few years (Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, 2017). The rate, however, is higher than the advanced OECD countries. An illustrative list of relative poverty rates are in Figure 1. Among many criticisms of this official poverty threshold, one salient criticism is that it is outdated. Composition and diets of American households have changed vastly since 1963, and the measure does not take into account modern expenses typical of households today. However, advocates have not been able to change this legislated official poverty measure. Thus, alternative measures are now being published, one of which is the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM). It takes the mean of expenditures on food, clothing, shelter and utilities over all two-child consumer units in the 30 th to 36 th percentile range multiplied by 1.2. The methodology follows closely the recommendations made by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) poverty measurement panel convened in 1992 (Institute for Research on Poverty, 2016). Figure 1. Selected OECD Relative Poverty Rates (OECD, 2018).

4 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 4 DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY (Cont.) Therefore, a key difference between absolute and relative measures is that while the former compares with a minimum standard of living, the latter compares with the population at large. That is, relative poverty views poverty not just in terms of material lack, but also cultural and social lack. This is reflected in the following quote on childhood poverty from Stewart (2016): T he relative income measure reflects an understanding that what children need to thrive depends on what others around them have. In rich countries, children don t just need adequate food, clothes and shelter (though these are by no means a given for all children in the UK today), but also to participate in the everyday activities that many children take for granted: swimming lessons, school trips, having a friend to tea. However, the relative poverty threshold is arbitrary. Thus, alternative measures of poverty have been developed that combine the principles of both absolute and relative poverty. In addition, while concrete and direct, monetary poverty focuses too narrowly on only one of many aspects of living in poverty. It also constrains policy to only income maintenance, which is limited in getting people out of poverty. Thus, alternative measures that look at multiple dimensions of poverty and which go beyond monetary poverty have been developed. Capability & Multi-Dimensional Poverty In the capability approach by Economics Nobel Laurette Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum (World Bank, 2017), the poverty threshold reflects one s (in)ability to function in society. The constituent part of the standard of living is not the good, nor its characteristics, but the ability to do various things by using that good or those characteristics (Sen, 1983, p. 160). For example, the amount of food one needs for bare survival is less than the amount of food one needs to carry out a manual job; a linen shirt may have been sufficient at the time of Adam Smith, but today a job seeker requires internet at home and a mobile phone (World Bank, 2017, p. 139); a bicycle is a resource, but which a handicapped person cannot use (Sen, 1983). All these point to an approach to poverty that does not rely on a fixed threshold, but varies in time and context. Although Amartya Sen has resisted the identification of a list of capabilities, the capability approach has inspired the development of non-monetary measures of poverty such as the multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), which the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reports in its Human Development Reports. The MPI includes ten items in the three dimensions of health, education and living standard (Figure 2). One is poor in multiple dimensions if one is deprived in 33.33% or more of the weighted MPI indicators. The percentage of people who are MPI poor gives the MPI incidence. Besides this poverty threshold, the intensity of MPI poverty can also be measured from the percentage of indicators that one is deprived in. The multiplication of the MPI incidence and MPI intensity gives the MPI. Figure 2. Multi-dimensional poverty index (MPI) indicators (OPHI, 2017). Participatory Approaches to Measuring Multi- Dimensional Poverty While the MPI and the capability approach are the most widely applied globally, viewing poverty from multiple dimensions had already been articulated by scholars much earlier. For example, Peter Townsend in the UK pioneered a measure of deprivation, which included the following dimensions: diet, clothing, fuel and light, home amenities, housing and housing facilities, the immediate environment of the home, the general conditions and security of work, family support, recreation, education, health, social relations (Townsend, 1979). Here, the social dimension to poverty is brought in, and reflects the social exclusion aspect of poverty besides material exclusion. The approaches to measuring take on participatory approaches. In one method, the determination of deprivation is by consensus through surveys in two steps: 1. Asking individuals to indicate from a list of items which are considered necessities; and 2. Asking individuals whether they lack those necessities by choice or because they cannot afford them (Mack, 2011). In another method, the Centre for Research in Social Policy (CRSP) at Loughborough University in the UK has been using a participatory, group consensual approach to determine a budget that is needed for specific household types to achieve a minimum standard of living (Bradshaw et al., 2008).

5 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 5 DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY (Cont.) Poverty in Singapore Singapore has not adopted an official poverty line or participated in international relative poverty reports such as those of the OECD s. Rather, it applies different thresholds for different kinds of government assistance, thus defining individuals or families as needy of that service. The following illustrates a few of such thresholds: ComCare Short-to-Medium Term Assistance: Household income of $1,900 a month or per capita income of $650 a month (Ministry of Social and Family Development, 2017) Low-Wage Worker: Gross monthly income of 20 th percentile (Ministry of Manpower, 2015) Workfare Income Supplement: Gross monthly income of $2,000 (Workfare, 2017) ComCare Student Care Subsidies: Household income of $4,000 a month or per capita income of $1,000 a month (Ministry of Social and Family Development, 2018) Ministry of Education Financial Assistance Scheme: Household income of $2,750 a month or per capita income of $690 a month (Ministry of Education, 2018) Public rental housing: Total household gross income of $1,500 per month (Housing & Development Board, 2018) The different thresholds above can be seen to be flexible in catering to different kinds of needs, and are revised occasionally. However, the cut off income levels are to some extent arbitrary and can become outdated quickly. For example, ComCare is said to target the bottom 20%. In 2016, $1,900 was at the 5th percentile (based on the average reported in the Income Trends Report 2016 for the 1st to 10th decile). So who can be considered poor in Singapore? We turn next to estimates, tabulated in Table 1. The threshold of $1,878 for absolute poverty was arrived at after iterations in my Social Work Masters class on Poverty and Assetbuilding, consultations with a few colleagues, and itemized price comparisons by two student assistants. The estimate is extremely conservative. It reflects only basic necessities for a four-person household with two adults and two children, one in primary school and one in secondary school. The basic necessities include food; a two-room flexi apartment bought in a non-mature estate with maximum grants; utilities; service and conservancy charges; concession transport; polyclinic medical expenses; spectacles for two members; basic household supplies; school uniform, books and supplies; and computing and telecommunication. This household configuration caters to the most basic of needs because it does not take into account households with younger or older children whose expenses tend to be higher, or any chronic health condition. It also accounts for universal subsidies, e.g. housing grants and concessionary transport card but not means-tested subsidies, e.g. MOE Financial Assistance. Comparing the threshold with the Income Trends Report (2017), 7.53% of working households are in absolute poverty. Table 1. Estimated poverty rates in 2017 Type of poverty Among working households Among all types of households Absolute Poverty 7.53% 11.77% Absolute poverty in basic consumption & 8.50% 13.26% investment Relative Poverty 26.65% Lower bound 26.65% This rate of working poor is within the 6-8% estimated by Yeoh (2013) (as cited in Donaldson et al. 2013), which used the 2012 Average Household Expenditure on Basic Needs (AHEBN) a monetary measure calculated by the Singapore government s Department of Statistics (DOS). It consists of the average expenditure on food, clothing and shelter in a reference poor household living in a one to two-room Housing and Development Board (HDB) or government rental flat, multiplied by a factor of 1.25 to account for other household needs like transport, education and other necessary expenditures for normal living (Donaldson et al., 2013). The AHEBN is not public information, but the 2012 level was published in parliamentary records as $1,250 per month for a four-person household. To estimate poverty rate among non-working households, Yeoh assumed half of non-working households are poor and that the elderly who do not meet the CPF minimum sum are poor. The Ministry of Manpower estimates that about 30% will not meet the basic retirement sum in 2020 (Ministry of Manpower, n.d.). Applying this 30% to the 8.3% non-working households aged 60 and above, and half of the remaining 3.5% gives 2.49% who are elderly poor, and 1.75% who are non-working non-elderly poor. In total, the estimated absolute poverty rate is 11.77%. In a Caritas presentation, Yeoh (2012) estimated the minimum expenses required if goods necessary for households to build human capital are included. He called these basic investment goods which included computer services, education and training. This poverty rate is reported in Table 1 as absolute poverty in basic consumption & investment. In my computation, I counted only a laptop to be shared by the children as an investment good. The rest of computing costs were counted as basic consumption. In addition to education and training, I also added basic life insurance as basic investments. My threshold of $2,039 gives a poverty rate of 7.9% of working households. Applying the same scale of overall absolute poverty rate to the rate for only working households (11.77%/7.53%=1.56), 13.26% is estimated to be in absolute consumption and investment poverty. 2 Itemized costs can be found at

6 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 6 DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY (Cont.) My rates are at the low end of the rates previously estimated by Yeoh for two reasons. Firstly, my threshold and assumptions are more conservative, and secondly, in recent years, more subsidies have been given for some necessities, e.g. housing, transport. The relative poverty in 2017 is computed as follows. From the average monthly household income from work in Table 13a of the Income Trends Report 2017, I take the mean of the income in the 41st to 50th decile and the 51st to 60th decile as the income at the 50th decile, i.e. median income. Half of this median income gives the relative poverty threshold, which is $5,076. To compute the number of resident households with incomes below $5,076, I refer to Table 8 of the same report, which reports the percentage of households whose earnings are within $1,000 income ranges. For example, 5.4% of households earn between $5,000 and $5,999. Assuming a proportional distribution within each $1,000 band, 7.6% of the 5.4% (0.41% overall) earn between $5,000 and $5,076. Adding this 0.41% to the percentages of households who earn below the $5,000 income range, 23.51% of all households earn less than $5,076. Excluding non-working households, 23.51% of the remaining 88.2% gives a relative poverty rate of 26.65%. Without distributional information on the incomes of non-working households, this 26.65% reflects the relative poverty rate among working households, and can be extrapolated as the lower bound of an overall relative poverty rate. Applying the same formula to data made available by the Department of Statistics since 2000, I constructed the relative poverty rate since 2000, and found that the rate has increased by an average of 0.77% per year since 2000 and 0.21% since No participatory measure has been included in the computations in this article. A possible measure is the participatory group consensual approach developed by CRSP at Loughborough University to determine a minimum household budget for different types of households. The strength of using this approach is in involving members of the public to deliberate and construct budgets that are deemed necessary to meet basic needs for different household types. The budgets established from this participatory approach means that they are more likely to resonate with the general public, compared to measures established by experts or from the government. Currently, a team of researchers from NUS and NTU are using this approach to establish budgets for different elderly households to meet their basic needs. Conclusion With the caveats that my estimates are just estimates, and that that poverty rates are not comparable due to different methods, assumptions and limitations in national data, we can however make two conclusions from the estimates: 1. Given how conservative my absolute poverty estimate is, a substantial 12% of households in Singapore do not earn enough to meet basic consumption needs. 2. The relative poverty rate in Singapore indicates that a substantial 26% of households in Singapore do not earn enough to keep up with the rest of Singapore. This is higher than other advanced economies. My estimates use the common metrics used in the world, and not in comparison to levels of extreme poverty that many Singaporeans often associate poverty with. While the state has expanded its recognition of targeted tangible needs such as children s education, health care and housing, and drawn income thresholds in meeting these needs, there is still hesitance to recognize these families as poor. While there is danger that a poverty label might stigmatize low-income families, the current problem of not recognizing poverty as poverty is that less societal redistribution is channelled to them than is needed. To undo unrealistic notions of poverty, a first step is to raise perceived thresholds of poverty. To some, relative or participatory thresholds are too high. However, most advanced countries in the world, including Hong Kong, focus on such relative and participatory measures. The higher relative threshold also means that the rest of Singapore has progressed quickly above absolute levels. What kind of society are we if Singapore is to progress ahead, but assign third world extreme poverty living standards to our low-income households? Acknowledgements I thank the students in my Poverty and Asset-building Policy Masters module (Amdis, Clarice, Francesca, Janet, Fay, Jim Jim, Jenna, Zul, Audrie, Zhiwei and Michelle) for the in-class discussions that shaped the framework for the measurements in this article, Matthew Low Jingwen and Cheritta Low for research assistance, and Neo Yu Wei, Ho Kong Weng and Kwok Chee Seng for inputs.

7 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 7 DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF POVERTY (Cont.) References Bradshaw, J., Middleton, S., Davis, A., Oldfield, N., Smith, N., Cusworth, L., & Williams, J. (2008). A minimum income standard for Britain: what people think. Department of Statistics Singapore. (2018). Monthly Household Income from Work (including Employer CPF Contributions) Tables 8 & 13A Retrieved from Donaldson, J. A., Loh, J., Mudaliar, S., Kadir, M., Wu, B., & Yeoh, L. K. (2013). Measuring poverty in Singapore: Frameworks for consideration. Social Space Issue 6. Singapore Management University. Full Fact. (2018). Poverty in the UK: a guide to the facts and figures. Retrieved from: poverty-uk-guide-facts-and-figures/ Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. (2017). Hong Kong Poverty Situation Report Retrieved from: eng/pdf/hong_kong_poverty_situation_report_2016 ( ).pdf GOV.UK National Statistics. (2018). HBAI: Summary results. Retrieved from: statistics/households-below-average-income to Housing & Development Board. (2018). Public Rental Scheme Eligibility. Retrieved from: renting-from-hdb/public-rental-scheme/eligibility Institute for Research on Poverty (2016). How is poverty measured in the United States? University of Wisconsin-Madison. Retrieved from: faqs/faq2.htm. Mack, J. (2011). Consensual method. Retrieved from: Ministry of Education. (2018). MOE Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS). Retrieved from: Ministry of Manpower. (2015). Gross Monthly Income From Work. Retrieved from: Pages/Gross-Monthly-Income-from-Work-Data-and- Other-Resources.aspx Ministry of Manpower (n.d.) Executive Summary and Recommendations at a Glance. media/mom/documents/employment-practices/cpfadvisory-panel/cpf-advisory-panel-report-executivesummary.pdf Ministry of Social and Family Development. (2017). Com- Care Short-to-Medium Term Assistance. Retrieved from: Medium-Term-Assistance.aspx Ministry of Social and Family Development. (2018). Com- Care Student Care Subsidies. Retrieved from: Care-Subsidies.aspx OECD. (2018). Poverty rate (indicator). Retrieved from: OPHI. (2017). Global Multidimensional Poverty Index Retrieved from: Semega, J. L., Fontenot, K. R., & Kollar, M. A. (2017). Income and poverty in the United States: Current Population Reports, Sen, A. (1983). Poor, relatively speaking. Oxford economic papers, 35(2), Stewart, K. (2016). Why the government must continue to measure child poverty. Retrieved from: theconversation.com/why-the-government-mustcontinue-to-measure-child-poverty Townsend, P. (1979). Poverty in the United Kingdom: a survey of household resources and standards of living. Univ of California Press. United Nations. (n. d.). Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere. Retrieved from: sustainabledevelopment/poverty/ United Nations. (n.d.). Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty & Hunger. Retrieved from: millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml United Nations Development Programme. (2016). UNDP and the concept and measurement of poverty. Retrieved from: librarypage/poverty-reduction/issue-brief---undp-andthe-concept-and-measurement-of-poverty.html Workfare. (2017). Workfare Income Supplement (WIS) Scheme Eligibility Criteria. Retrieved from: Criteria.aspx World Bank. (2005a). Chapter 1. What is Poverty and Why Measure it? Retrieved from siteresources.worldbank.org/pglp/resources/ PMch1.pdf World Bank. (2005b). Chapter 2. Measuring Poverty. Retrieved from Resources/PMch2.pdf World Bank. (2015a). Commission on Global Poverty. Retrieved from: commission-on-global-poverty World Bank. (2015b). How is the global poverty line derived? How is it different from national poverty lines? Retrieved from: knowledgebase/articles/ how-is-the-globalpoverty-line-derived-how-is-it World Bank. (2017). Monitoring Global Poverty: Report of the Commission on Global Poverty. Retrieved from: openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/25141 Yeoh, L.K. (2012). Presentation at Cycle and Psyche of Poverty Workshop: A Caritas Dialogue.

8 NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 8 THEORY? RESEARCH? SCIENCE? BUT I AM A SOCIAL WORKER. A WRITE-UP ON IAN SHAW S PUBLIC LECTURE Goh Guan Zhen I do aspire to provoke conversation and debate. This was Professor Ian Shaw s concluding hope when he tackled typical and strongly held views about theory, research and science in the recent SSR s seminar. Social service practitioners might feel somewhat disconnected to these three terms and instinctively feel that these belonged to the world of academics. However, these have significant relevance and far-reaching implications on policy and practice. Therefore, this article aims to identify key debates surrounding these issues, describe what Shaw argued for and invite readers to reconsider their views. What is your perspective on the relationship between research and practice? The conventional approach is a hierarchical one where researchers provide their expert findings to practitioners through information and recommended methods. Social workers would then utilise the findings in their daily work. Shaw cautions that this line of thinking implies that if problems occur in practice, the fault goes to social workers for failing to accurately apply the findings. However, this may not depict reality. Hence, he contests this by arguing that the relationship between research and practice is a dualistic one. Practice comes out of research but research also comes out of practice. Practitioners would use a particular approach in work which they believe is effective yet this belief coexists with scepticism as they also remain open to alternative approaches. Does this remind you of scientists who test their hypotheses while being aware that there could be other ways of interpretations? Indeed, Shaw believes that practice research has that potential to challenge the hierarchical relationship between research and practice. Would you agree or disagree with him? The second debate is an age old one on the view that quantitative research is more deeply used than qualitative research. Policy makers seem drawn to quantitative evidence because it seems more scientific and addresses outcome and effectiveness. It seems to give a surer grip on complex social problems compared to qualitative research. Therefore, it is important for users to be aware of its limitations, e.g. measurement errors and publication bias, when applying such evidence. Shaw also questions how useful quantitative findings are to individual outcomes. For instance, probability statements such as knowing the effectiveness of a certain scheme or program is 60% hold limited value to practitioners in terms of what to do. They would still need to exercise discretionary judgment. Qualitative research appears to enhance this judgment by offering different points of views and encouraging users to develop more conscious thinking about the meaning of issues. The key realization is that the use of research influences how we think about social problems and solutions. Could policy makers benefit from a more qualitative way of thinking while practitioners gain from a more quantitative way of thinking? What do you think? The third controversy surrounds evidence-based practice (EBP). The backdrop of this issue is the realization, as expressed by William James, that you cannot pick up rocks in a field without a theory. But where does this theoretical basis of why you do what you do come from? Historically, so it is claimed, morality and authority provided that source. Today, EBP claims to offer an empiricallybased foundation for practice. This also belongs to a wider battle between reason and scientific progress versus emotions, intuition and tacit knowledge. So how does one make sense of EBP especially when its use is so widespread?

9 THEORY? RESEARCH? SCIENCE? (Cont.) One does not simply take the evidence, follow the steps blindly and expect the right answers. Evidence-based practice was defined as the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making dimensions about the care of individual patients (Sackett et al, 1996). Shaw identifies that conscientious consists of a moral claim, explicit calls for transparency and openness and judicious a wisdom claim. In short, the idea of EBP does not equate to a valuefree and neutral technique about what works and what does not work. Users are also cautioned on the blind spots of EBP. Firstly, users might assume such confidence in the evidence and overestimate the beneficial effects while underestimating adverse effects. Users need to be aware that evidence could hold different extents of internal and external validity which affects the effectiveness of its use. Secondly, it is easier to produce evidence that can be quantifiably measured, e.g. hospital waiting time, resulting in the neglect of evidence for non-measurable effects. Consequently, practitioners are geared towards improving performance that can be measured and there is a lack of accountability for non-measurable issues. Thirdly, evaluating the use of EBP, which often occurs during failures, is not only an individual social worker s issue. It is necessary to be sensitive to the social and organizational contexts surrounding its use. Shaw does not actually dismiss EBP as social workers are ethically committed to use empirically validated knowledge where it exists. His contribution is to advocate for critical thinking to be included in the use of EBP. One does not simply take the evidence, follow the steps blindly and expect the right answers. Practitioners need to be aware of its underlying values, accurately assess the quality of evidence, recognize biases, and exercise sound judgment in the application of EBP. Do debates and controversies equate to someone being right and the other being mistaken? The hidden fourth and final challenge is unrelated to theory, research and science. Yet, it is the foundation in which we consider our views and participate in discussions surrounding these issues. Shaw challenges the audience not to see these issues as questions of errors but as indicators of deep rooted tensions. He calls for us not to be predisposed to the side that we favour but to respectfully consider both sides of the arguments and be open to change our views. In this way, the nature of our discussions would not be reduced to personal disagreements. In conclusion, this seminar invites practitioners, policy makers and academics to participate in meaningful and credible conversations and debates about the truth of claims related to theory, research and science. Reference Sackett, D., W. Rosenberg, J. Gray, et al Evidence-Based Medicine: What It Is and What It Isn t. British Medical Journal 312(7023): NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 9

10 Call for Papers SSR SNIPPET NUS SOCIAL SERVICE RESEARCH CENTRE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 10 Aim and Scope: SSR SNIPPET welcomes any original manuscript describing a piece of local research in the social services. If the research had already been published elsewhere (e.g. journal or agency report) but deemed by the author/s to be of relevance in the local context, we would welcome a summary of the published article for review and potential for publication via SSR SNIPPET online. Submission Requirements: Please keep the word length to words. Please include the following details with your submission: Author/s name/s, designation and agency Corresponding author s contact details your submission to: ssr@nus.edu.sg Enquiries: Please send enquires to Ms Joyce Lim at ssr@nus.edu.sg.