Interverntion, evidence-based research and everyday life

Intervention is a key concept in the technology of psychology and it plays a decisive role in evidence-based research. But analyses of this concept are remarkably sparse. Based on a critical analysis of the conception of intervention in the American Psychological Association’s guidelines for evidence-based research and practice, I argue that, while psychological interventions are primarily meant to work in people’s everyday lives, how interventions do so is barely addressed and poorly captured. Evidence-based research, as currently conceived, is an obstacle to overcome this shortcoming. Studies of practices of intervening in relation to people’s ongoing everyday lives are needed to improve our empirical basis for reconceptualizing intervention. On the background of studies of how psychotherapeutic practices intervene in the everyday lives of clients, I show how interventions work in clients’ everyday lives and point out consequences for reconceptualizing psychological intervention.