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45 JCPSLP Volume 18, Number 1 2016 Journal of Clinical Practice in Speech-Language Pathology
Sue McAllister
What’s the evidence?
Tips for accessing
evidence from research
Sue McAllister
Evidence-based practice (EBP), knowledge, and skills
are integrated throughout speech pathology programs’
curricula, with students learning how to critically
review and integrate evidence from three sources into their
clinical reasoning processes: research; clinical practice;
perspective of the service recipient(s). We know from the
literature that accessing research evidence is commonly
cited as a major hurdle for speech pathologists implementing
EBP after graduation. Here are some resources that can be
used to access evidence from research.
Research evidence can be accessed in several formats:
• multiple articles appraised for quality and synthesised
into systematic reviews, clinical guidelines, or critically
appraised topics (CATs);
• single articles appraised for quality (critically appraised
papers or CAPs);
• original articles.
The list below provides some options to access full text
for CATs, CAPs, and research articles.
Synthesised evidence
• Communication trust – what works: database of
evidenced interventions to support children’s speech,
language, and communication: http://www.
• The National Guideline Clearinghouse: database of
evidence-based guidelines with a search function to
allow for communication or dysphagia guidelines to be
located:
• The Cochrane Library: the “gold standard” for
systematic reviews with a search function to allow for
communication or dysphagia systematic reviews to be
located:
• ASHA evidence-based systematic reviews: a number
of these have full text available:
members/ebp/EBSRs.htm
• ASHA evidence maps: an excellent resource that
provides layers of maps in various areas of practice,
allowing you to select specific topics, and leading to
a list of evidence-based summary statements: http://
Single articles appraised for quality
• SpeechBite: this resource provides a searchable
database of peer-reviewed papers with links to the
article abstract as well as good information on EBP and
training on how to evaluate quality of papers: http://
• National Electronic Library for Health: identifies articles
that meet appropriate standards of evidence: https://
A new service was established
in 2015 and will provide further information over time:
Original articles
The following databases are accessible to the public and
can be searched for relevant articles:
• ERIC (Education Resources Information Centre): http://
eric.ed.gov/
• PubMed:
• TRIP (Translating Evidence Into Practice): http://www.
• Listing of other publicly searchable databases: http://
report.nih.gov/searchable_public_databases/
Accessing the full text of original research articles can
be challenging at times. Here are some options. First,
university alumni can often access a good range of
ejournals for an annual fee – check with your university.
Second, if you are an employee in a large organisation,
it is likely that there is a librarian within your organisation
who can order a full text of an article. There may also be
access to full-text ejournals, databases, and ebooks. Third,
publicly accessible databases such as ERIC (education)
and PubMed (health) include some free full-text articles,
which can be identified through searching. In fact, more
and more funding bodies are now requiring that research
be published in full-text online journals so more papers will
become available over time. Fourth, in some states and
territories your public library will do a “document delivery”
order for you to get in copies of journal articles you want.
Fifth, you can also contact study authors directly to request
a copy of the manuscript. Publishers generally allow
authors to distribute copies of their articles for educational
purposes. Furthermore, many authors now upload freely
available pre-publication versions of their manuscripts on
online research networks (e.g., )
or via their universities’ academic commons (e.g., http://
.
Correspondence to:
Associate Professor Sue McAllister
Speech Pathology
Flinders University, South Australia
phone: +61 8 7221 8823
email: