Towards an evidence-based educational guidance: applied to a study on adolescents and networks

Abstract

Currently, the quality of counselors’ performance depends on their competence to obtain and interpret evidence-based information. This means enhancing the role of the counselor as a researcher including research methods and techniques in their training programs. In this article two specific proposals are made. First, systematic review is proposed as an affordable and necessary secondary research resource, to obtain evidence to guide professional practice and innovation and that allows defining the state of the art in any topic in educational guidance. Second, the use of classification techniques in quantitative primary research is proposed because it is consistent with the complexity of the phenomena being studied and with the characteristics of the data usually managed in psycho-pedagogical work. These proposals are illustrated with an example of research focused on a topic of current interest for the educational counselor: the relationship between adolescents and social networks. After a systematic approach to answer three review questions, an empirical study with decision trees is carried out to identify parental control profiles, with data from 857 Madrid high school students, smartphone users. The results indicate that parents exercise little control over the use that their children make of the networks and contribute differential aspects with implications for guidance action. In conclusion, it is clear that the evidence-based approach in guidance is useful.