Purpose

This article provides both a tutorial and a clinical example of how speech-language pathologists (SLPs) can conduct evidence-based practice (EBP) when working with children with speech sound disorders (SSDs). It is a companion paper to the narrative review of 134 intervention studies for children who have an SSD (Baker & McLeod, 2011).

Method

A seven-step EBP decision-making process is presented for managing SSDs in children (drawing on the work of Dollaghan, 2007, and Gillam & Gillam, 2006). We describe how SLPs can integrate externally published evidence with evidence from clinical practice as well as client factors, values, and preferences, to make clinical decisions. An organized EBP network is described as a clinical example of the application of the EBP decision-making process.

Results

Compared with a matched and national sample, SLPs in the EBP network were more likely to read relevant articles and tended to have more confidence in research evidence and in their own ability to select intervention targets based on published research.

Conclusion

SLPs need to use their clinical expertise to integrate research findings with the constraints and complexities of everyday clinical practice and client factors, values, and preferences in their management of SSDs in children.

Evidence-based practice (EBP) has been espoused as a framework for guiding speech-language pathologists'(SLPs') management of speech sound disorders (SSDs) in children (eg, Baker & McLeod, 2004; Tyler, 2006, 2008; Williams, McLeod, & McCauley, 2010) and is a term that has become part of most SLPs' workplace vernacular. EBP has been described as the integration of current best research evidence with clinical expertise and client values and preferences (Sackett, Straus, Richardson, Rosenberg, & Haynes, 2000). It is a topic on which books have been written (eg, Dollaghan, 2007), workshops and seminars have been presented (eg, Justice, 2010), special issues in journals have been published (eg, Kamhi, 2006), new journals have been produced (eg, EBP Briefs, Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention), curricula have been created (eg, Hall-Mills & Apel, 2007; McCabe, Purcell, Baker, Madill, & Trembath, 2009), and task forces and centers have been established (eg, US Preventive Services Task Force; American Speech-Language-Hearing Association’s [ASHA’s] National Center for Evidence-Based Practice in Communication Disorders [N-CEP].) However, according to Brackenbury, Burroughs, and Hewitt (2008, p. 78), EBP “has not become a regular part of clinical practice.”