Agency-university partnerships for evidence-based practice: A national survey of schools of social work

Efforts to disseminate and implement evidence-based practice (EBP) and empirically supported interventions (ESI) have been rapidly increasing in social work education, research, and practice. Nevertheless, the gap between research and practice remains substantial, reducing the opportunity for social work clients to benefit from the best available practices. Partnerships between schools of social work and community agencies to promote EBP, ESI, or both offer a promising solution to this problem. However, little is known about these partnership efforts. This article presents the results of a national, Web-based survey conducted with Council on Social Work Education-accredited schools of social work (N = 126) designed to explore partnership efforts between schools of social work and community agencies to promote EBP in social work practice. Results indicate that the majority of respondents perceive EBP as beneficial. The most common EBP partnership efforts included individual faculty members conducting EBP research in partnership with agencies, partnerships with field placement agencies for student training, and provision of EBP-related resources such as library access to agencies. Obstacles to agency-university EBP partnerships included time, funding, and limited agency resources. Addressing these barriers and building from schools' current limited partnership efforts to develop more comprehensive partnership models may help to narrow the gap between research and practice.