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Evidence-Based Practice (EBP)

🤝 Social Welfare By CampusDown Wiki Editorial Team Last updated
Quick answer: evidence-based practice (EBP) means choosing interventions by integrating the best current research evidence with professional judgment and the client's values and circumstances, instead of relying on habit or authority. It began as evidence-based medicine and spread to social work, nursing, psychotherapy and education.
Contents
  1. 1. What is evidence-based practice?
  2. 2. Three components
  3. 3. The five steps
  4. 4. Levels of evidence
  5. 5. Use in social work and nursing
  6. 6. Criticism and limits
  7. 7. References

What is evidence-based practice?

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is an approach in which practitioners decide how to help a client by systematically finding and using research on what works, rather than relying on habit or the authority of supervisors and agencies.

It grew out of evidence-based medicine (EBM), proposed in the early 1990s by Gordon Guyatt and colleagues at McMaster University in Canada. Sackett and colleagues (1996) defined EBM as "the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." In social work, Eileen Gambrill (1999) presented EBP as an alternative to authority-based practice.

Three components

  • Best research evidence: high-quality findings on the effects of interventions.
  • Practitioner expertise: the clinical skill and experience to assess a client and judge whether research applies to this case.
  • Client values and preferences: what the client wants, their culture and circumstances. Haynes and colleagues (2002) added clinical state and circumstances to the model.

The five steps

  1. Ask: turn a practice problem into an answerable question, often in PICO form (population, intervention, comparison, outcome).
  2. Acquire: search databases and systematic reviews such as those of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations.
  3. Appraise: judge the quality and applicability of the evidence by design, sample and risk of bias.
  4. Apply: integrate the evidence with expertise and client values to choose and carry out an intervention.
  5. Assess: monitor outcomes and review the process to improve it.

Levels of evidence

Evidence is often shown as a pyramid: systematic reviews and meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials at the top, then individual RCTs, quasi-experimental and cohort studies, case-control studies, case studies and expert opinion. In fields such as social work, where randomized trials are often impractical or ethically constrained, qualitative research and single-subject designs also count as important evidence.

Use in social work and nursing

  • Programs with demonstrated effects are preferred in child-abuse prevention, depression and anxiety treatment and addiction services, and linked to agency program evaluation.
  • Family interventions weigh theoretical frameworks such as family systems theory alongside outcome studies.
  • In nursing, fall and pressure-ulcer prevention and infection-control guidelines are typical EBP products, and departures from standard guidelines can bear on medical malpractice judgments.
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Criticism and limits

  • An RCT-centered hierarchy may not capture the effects of complex social problems or relationship-based work.
  • Front-line practitioners often lack time, database access and research-methods training to find and appraise evidence.
  • Emphasizing only "proven programs" can override individual and cultural differences and can be used to justify budget cuts.
  • Balancing EBP with social work's ecological view of the whole environment remains a challenge.

References

  1. Evidence-Based Medicine Working Group [Guyatt, G., et al.]. (1992). Evidence-based medicine: A new approach to teaching the practice of medicine. JAMA, 268(17), 2420–2425.
  2. Sackett, D. L., Rosenberg, W. M. C., Gray, J. A. M., Haynes, R. B., & Richardson, W. S. (1996). Evidence based medicine: What it is and what it isn't. BMJ, 312(7023), 71–72.
  3. Gambrill, E. (1999). Evidence-based practice: An alternative to authority-based practice. Families in Society, 80(4), 341–350.
  4. Haynes, R. B., Devereaux, P. J., & Guyatt, G. H. (2002). Clinical expertise in the era of evidence-based medicine and patient choice. ACP Journal Club, 136(2), A11–A14.
  5. Gibbs, L. E. (2003). Evidence-Based Practice for the Helping Professions. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Reports and materials that use this theory (Korean)

There are no materials dedicated to this theory yet, but you can search related reports in the CampusDown library (Korean).

Find more reports · Search '근거기반실천' on CampusDown →
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This article was last updated on October 15, 2026. It is based on widely recognized original works and textbooks; when citing it in a paper, please check the original sources listed in the references.