Rebecca Featherston

Monash University

Rebecca is a social work researcher at Monash University, Australia. She is involved in numerous research projects across the Australian child and family sector, including multiple evidence syntheses and outcome evaluations relating to children and families, child abuse and neglect, and family violence. Her broad research interests include areas of critical thinking and decision-making within human service systems, and particularly how theory and evidence can feed into interventions that improve real-life outcomes for human service users. She has extensive experience in empirical and quantitative research, and loves to design studies that answer interesting and important research and practice questions. Rebecca has undertaken multiple evidence syntheses, including systematic reviews and meta-analyses, covering diverse topics relating to decision making in social work and broader allied health, parenting, child welfare, and cognitive bias mitigation. Her current research investigates how cognitive and other biases can impact clinical reasoning, how these errors can alter decision-making outcomes in health and social service delivery, and, importantly, what strategies can mitigate their negative influence. Dr. Featherston has a Masters of Social Work, and a PhD in Biosciences from the University of Melbourne.