CONDUCTING DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH IN THE NEW NHS - AN ILLUSTRATION FROM2 FORMS OF INPATIENT CARE FOR THOSE WITH SEVERE MENTAL-ILLNESS

The NHS Research and Development Strategy has provided fresh impetus t o the traditional interest of mental health practitioners in the evalu ation and development of their services. The purpose of the present an alysis is to outline a comparative evaluation of two kinds of service for people with enduring mental illness so as to highlight methods tha t can be used to develop services in keeping with the R&D strategy. Pa rticular attention is given to the instruments that can be used to pro vide topical, reliable and valid indications of the relative benefits of different services. The illustrative evaluation was based on a samp le of 47 service users attending either a traditional inpatient psychi atric hospital ward or a new inpatient unit, based in the community. M easures of these users' stress, coping and strain were recorded before and after up to 3-month periods of care, in addition to information o n staff perspectives, client satisfaction and other variables. Statist ical analyses indicated the slight superiority of the community-based service, but the lack of a rigorous research design precludes causal i nferences. Rather, the study aims to draw out some technical and inter personal lessons for service developers, in the context of an increasi ngly 'effectiveness'-conscious NHS. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.