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*Communication Science & Disorders

Use this guide as an entryway to find books, articles, and web resources in the discipline. For more targeted research in specific subjects, contact us to schedule a one-on-one research consultation.

Evidence-Based Practice Tools

Best evidence pyramid diagram; the elements of the diagram are explained below
Pyramid modified from: Navigating the Maze, University of Virginia, Health Sciences Library 
Source: Health Sciences Library, University of Washington

Evidence-Based Practice

For a comprehensive research guide to Systematic Reviews, see here.

United States

  • ASHA Practice Portal (from the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)
    Provides resources on clinical and professional topics and linking to available evidence to facilitate clinical decision making and increase practice efficiency for audiologists and speech-language pathologists 
  • Healthy People 2020 Evidence-Based Resources (from the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion)  
    Systematic reviews relevant to Healthy People 2020 topic areas. Free.
  • PubMed Clinical Queries (from  the National Library of Medicine)
    Provides specialized searches of the PubMed database to retrieve citations identified as systematic reviews, meta-analyses, reviews of clinical trials, evidence-based medicine, consensus development conferences, and guidelines. Free.
  • PubMed Health (from the National Library of Medicine) 
    Provides summaries and full-text of selected systematic reviews on the prevention and treatment of diseases and conditions. Enter a keyword to search the site, then on the search results page, refine the search by clicking Article types: Systematic reviews on the left-hand side of the page. Free.

International

  • Campbell Collaboration : Campbell Library : Campbell Systematic Reviews (from The Campbell Collaboration)
    Systematic reviews on the effects of interventions within the areas of education, criminal justice, social welfare, and international development. Free.
  • SpeechBITE : Speech Pathology Database for Best Interventions and Treatment Efficacy (from Australia) 
    • Provides access to the best evidence in speech pathology treatment
    • Conduct an advanced search and select "Systematic Review" in the "Research Design" drop-down menu.
  • Centre for Reviews and Dissemination Databases (from University of York, UK)
    Provides access to over 35,000 quality assessed systematic reviews of health and social care interventions;
    summaries of all Cochrane systematic reviews and protocols up to March 2015; and over 17,000 economic evaluations of health and social care interventions
  • Cochrane Library database (from John Wiley and Sons)
    Collection of six databases that contain different types of high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making, and a seventh database that provides information about groups in The Cochrane Collaboration. 
  • EPPI (Evidence for Practice and Policy Information) Centre : Knowledge library (from Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London, UK)  
    Collection of searchable databases of reviews related to health promotion and intervention.
  • Evidence Search (from National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, UK) 
    Evidence briefing papers and evidence reviews developed by the former Health Development Agency, UK.
  • Health Evidence (from McMaster University)
    Searchable registry of quality-rated systematic reviews evaluating the effectiveness of public health interventions. 

Covidence (a Systematic Review software) is available for the FSU community.

PICO
The first stage of any evidence-based practice process is formulating an answerable question. This forms the foundation for quality searching. An answerable question has a format that follows the PICO concept. The acronym translates to:

P – Populations/People/Patient/Problem
I  – Intervention(s)
C – Comparison
O – Outcome

PICO Worksheets

EMBASE database has a PICO Search mode 

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