How to Conduct Research in Your Private Practice

Mental health professionals who work in private practice and other clinical settings have huge opportunities to contribute to the science of our field. But they rarely do so. This article describes ways that practitioners who have research training can capitalize on recent developments in practice, science, and technology to conduct research in their private practice. I describe a model for conducting research as a practitioner that entails tightly integrating the research into clinical practice, and I point out why conducting research in your private practice is worth doing. The remainder of the paper provides a primer, describing strategies for implementing in a clinical setting all the elements of the research enterprise: addressing ethical and legal issues, keeping up to date with the scientific literature, selecting a good research question, conducting a single-case experimental design, finding collaborators and assistants, collecting the data, analyzing the data, writing the paper and getting it published, and handling time and money. Although this paper focuses on research in a solo or group private practice setting, many of the strategies described here can also prove useful in the conduct of research in hospital or community settings.