Clinical Perspective

Clinical perspective, or clinical inquiry/research (C/R), can be defined as gathering data while helping a client solve problems. The word clinical in this context implies two things: (1) that a client has asked a helper for some help, and (2) that the helping process is geared to solving some problem that the client has defined. The major premise is that useful data can be gathered in situations that are not initiated by the researcher. Gathering data, building concepts, and developing theory are the result of a research attitude, a desire to clarify what is going on and communicate that clarification to other researchers. Some of the best opportunities for such inquiry actually arise in situations in which the setting is created by someone who wants help, not by the researcher deciding what to study.

This kind of inquiry/research is important to the development of knowledge even if the researcher has not initiated or defined it because (1) during the helping process important data are usually revealed about the state of the system being worked with, and (2) the fact that the client has initiated the process and asks for help legitimizes the asking of questions that would normally be considered out of bounds because they would involve private information that a research subject might normally wish to hide from the researcher.

This type of data gathering is most relevant in the early stages of trying to understand the dynamics of a complex system because it is very likely to reveal the variables that are the most important drivers in the system. Once those drivers are identified through the clinical process, one can move to more formal empirical research with operational definitions and hypothesis testing. The development of relevant variables and theoretical models is therefore often the result of clinical inquiry. The prime data for such theories are case studies and comparative analyses of multiple cases.