PSICOLOGÍA BASADA EN LA EVIDENCIA: ALGUNAS CUESTIONES BÁSICAS Y UNA APROXIMACIÓN A TRAVÉS DE UNA REVISIÓN BIBLIOGRÁFICA SISTEMÁTICA

This article aims to discuss the concept of evidence as used in the psychological practice, starting with a brief tour of basic issues. It analyzes the processes, actors and scientific institutions that manage and validate the proposed interventions in the health, education and training fields. The results of a systematic literature review of articles published both in English and Spanish, in the period 2003-2013, are presented. Only articles published in referred journals included in SocINDEX, Medline, Eric and Academic Search Complete, were considered. Articles in which the term evidence was used with a different meaning (e.g. legal or forensic evidence) were not included in the present literature review. The database search yielded 196 articles, 41 of which met the selection criteria. These publications were classified in the following categories Clinical Psychology (49%), Education and Developmental Psychology (24%), Psychology Training (15%) and Health Psychology (12%). The results of this exploratory study show an extending scope of the evidence based psychology field. We note, however, some inconsistencies and problems both in the use of this construct and in the consolidation of the most effective methods, as well as an over representation of papers discussing conceptual aspects.