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Dear Terry and Karel, Please let me add a note on the relation of clinical, applied, and basic research to clinical guidelines for professional practice. Karel notes an issue that is often overlooked. He writes that "there is a step in between ‘clinical research’ and ‘guidelines’. In order to get from the results of clinical research to guidelines, it seems essential to compare a substantial number or clinical research results on all sorts of criteria. Based on the comparison and analysis of many clinical studies, it is possible to devise guidelines. This is a research activity, but it is not ‘clinical research’ anymore. I would classify the analysis of different clinical research results as ‘applied research’. Testing the alternative approaches to find ‘best practice’ is part of this. After that, some guidelines might be devised.” The reason for this step is the distinction between clinical research and applied research. These also relate to basic research. Basic research involves a search for general principles. These principles are abstracted and generalized to cover a variety of situations and cases. Basic research generates theory on several levels. This may involve macro level theories covering wide areas or fields, midlevel theories covering specific ranges of issues or micro level theories focused on narrow questions. Truly general principles often have broad application beyond their field of original, and their generative nature sometimes gives them surprising predictive power. Applied research adapts the findings of basic research to classes of problems. It may also involve developing and testing theories for these classes of problems. Applied research tends to be midlevel or micro level research. At the same time, applied research may develop or generate questions that become the subject of basic research. Clinical research involves specific cases. Clinical research applies the findings of basic research and applied research to specific situations. It may also generate and test new questions, and it may test the findings of basic and applied research in a clinical situation. Clinical research may also develop or generate questions that become the subject of basic research or applied research. Any of the three frames of research may generate questions for the other frames. Each may test the theories and findings of other kinds of research. It is important to note that clinical research generally involves specific forms of professional engagement. In the rough and tumble of daily practice, most design practice is restricted to clinical research. There isn’t time for anything else. Clinical research asks the question, “What kind of problem is involved in the case at hand?” In essence, clinical research generally involves diagnostics. But the question of guidelines that can be used in clinical practice is not a question of clinical research. It is, as Karel notes, an issue in applied research as one examines multiple cases to develop an understanding of the classes of cases to which certain kinds of solutions apply — and classes of cases to which those solutions may not apply, or may be contra-indicated as dangerous or likely to cause harm. The general discussion of research describes basic or fundamental research as the basis of applied research and clinical research leading to clinical application. One might well describe these the other way around, with clinical applications and clinical research constituting a massive numerical quantity from which we derive the question we examine in applied research. And we can see applied research as an empirical foundation for the hypotheses that we test in basic research. There is some kind of circular flow between and among them. In medical practice, the combined work of Joseph Lister, Louis Pasteur, and Ignatz Semmelweiss moved between and among all three kinds of research, leading to clinical guidelines that remain useful and effective today. Even now, when morbidity rates rise in hospitals, a frequent cause is the relaxation of strict hand washing routines before and after every patient contact, a clinical guideline that is anchored in sound research on all three levels. Karel’s comments on clinical research and professional guidelines are quite appropriate, as are the earlier research questions that appeared in a post from David Sless. Yours, Ken Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University Press | Launching in 2015 Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------