EFAP's Working Groups

EFAP’s primary mechanisms for meeting this challenge will take the form of five parallel Working Groups (WGs), each of which is charged with investigating Advanced Practices from a specific perspective. While quantitative study will be an ever-present factor in their work, their main mode of research will be qualitative. The WGs’ respective research agendas have been formulated with substantially different focuses (e.g., practitioners’ vs organizational perspectives) in complementary ways (e.g., interviews vs document-based programs), and their outputs will take strikingly different forms (e.g., analytical ‘lexicons’ of operant terminology vs dossiers of documentary materials). This heterogeneous approach will:

• encourage broadly diverse outreach in identifying Advanced Practices;
• discourage redundancy and ‘groupthink’ tendencies in parallel research efforts;
• give researchers a rich toolset for identifying and describing Advanced Practices;
• preserve the peculiar refractory qualities of specific projects and initiatives under study;
• capture key aspects of how Advanced Practices have evolved in the short and long term;
• reinforce the diversity of Advanced Practices in mode, context, substance, and form;
• promote synthetic analysis of organizational perspectives on Advanced Practices;
• foster much-needed meta-analysis of Advanced Practices (e.g., by identifying frameworks shared in seemingly disparate stakeholders and contexts); and
• instil experimentation in presentation format, inviting interest from a wide range of stakeholders.

Moreover, WGs will be required to:
1. maintain open, publicly accessible digital archives of their output;
2. treat findings as provisional (e.g., summarised as brief ‘requests for comments’);
3. circulate summary findings on a quarterly basis; and
4. confirm that they have reviewed each other’s summary materials.

These four basic principles will:
1. discourage problems that WG structures frequently face (e.g., dependency bottlenecks and cascading delays);
2. enrich the scope, form, substance, and presentation of their findings; and
3. provide a regular, ongoing point of entry for interested parties and potential contributors.

Most of all, given that each WG will inevitably discover material that directly informs the other WGs’ work, they will foster a culture of sharing — and ensure that parallel research efforts inform and complement each other on an ongoing basis.

All five WGs will share common basic activities (A) and deliverables (D);
• schedule regular meetings (A);
• reviewing material to comply with all applicable data-privacy regulations (A);
• publicly archiving research findings (e.g., as wikis — see below) (D);
• documenting research activities and strategies (D);
• maintaining publicly accessible mailing-list discussions (A);
• collating and summarizing provisional findings for distribution and presentation (D); and
• sharing the findings and knowledge in Training Schools.
These activities, and the research mandates detailed below, involve substantial workloads. EFAP believes that, taken as a whole, this program will provide numerous and diverse opportunities for:
 • all network participants to enhance networking and exchange specific knowledges in Short- Term Scientific Missions (STSMs)
• established researchers to receive formal institutional credit for academic and professional- service obligations;
• independent funding of specific research activities;
• younger scholars and practitioners to develop their practice, technical skills, and build their
careers; and
• promotions and presentations of ongoing research in professional and public settings.

EFAP expects and encourages contributors to publish their findings in relevant professional and academic publications (e.g., peer-reviewed academic journals, proceedings, and books), but mandating this lies beyond the scope of this proposal.