Skip to Main Content

Social Work 8952: Evidence Based Practice: Websites

Web Search Engines for Evidence Based Research

  • SUMsearch
    Specialized search engine focusing only on websites with evidence based resources.
  • Google Scholar
    Identify scholarly research avaulable on the web. There is no vetting process for what is included, so results need to be evaluated with a critical eye.
  • PubMed
    Created by the National Library of Medicine, PubMed is the free web version of MEDLINE, a comprehensive bibliographic database of medical literature.

Evidence-Based Practice Resources

The Campbell Collaboration: Library   
The Campbell Library of Systematic Reviews provides free online access to systematic reviews in the areas of education, criminal justice and social welfare. The library is a peer-reviewed source of reliable evidence of the effects of interventions.

The Cochrane Library
The Cochrane Library contains high-quality, independent evidence to inform healthcare decision-making. It includes reliable evidence from Cochrane and other systematic reviews, clinical trials, and more. Cochrane reviews provide the combined results of the world’s best medical research studies, and are recognized as the gold standard in evidence-based health care.

SAMHSA: A Guide To Evidence-Based Practices (EBP) on The Web
SAMHSA provides this guide to assist with simple and direct connections to Web sites that contain information about interventions to prevent and/or treat mental and substance use disorders. It provides a list of Web sites that contain information about specific evidence-based practices (EBPs) or provide comprehensive reviews of research findings.

SAMHSA: Evidence-Based Practice Implementation Resource Kits for Mental Health
The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and its Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) introduce six Evidence-Based Practice Implementation Resource Kits to encourage the use of evidence-based practices in mental health.

SAMHSA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs & Practices
A searchable online registry of mental health and substance abuse interventions that have been reviewed and rated by independent reviewers.

National Guideline Clearinghouse
NGC is a public resource for evidence-based clinical practice guidelines.

 California Evidence-Based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC)
The CEBC provides child welfare professionals with easy access to vital information about selected child welfare related programs. Each program is reviewed and rated utilizing the CEBC Scientific Rating scale to determine the level of evidence for the program. The programs are also rated on a Relevance to Child Welfare Rating Scale.

Center for Aging Policy --Evidence Database

Center for Evidence-based Practices

Coalition for Evidence Based Policy

EPPI Centre Evidence Library
The EPPI-Centre conducts systematic reviews of research evidence across a range of different topic areas and provides support for others who are undertaking systematic reviews or using research evidence.

Evidence Based Practice & Policy Online Resource Training Center

EDAC: Evidence Database on Aging Care

Guide for Child Welfare Administrators on Evidence Based Practice

  CDC: The Community Guide 
The guide to Community Preventive Services serves as a filter for scientific literature on specific health problems that can be large, inconsistent, uneven in quality, and even inaccessible. The Community Guide summarizes what is known about the effectiveness, economic efficiency, and feasibility of interventions to promote community health and prevent disease. The Task Force on Community Preventive Services makes recommendations for the use of various interventions based on the evidence gathered in the rigorous and systematic scientific reviews of published studies conducted by the review teams of the Community Guide. The findings from the reviews are published in peer-reviewed journals and also made available on this Internet website.

Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence 
Blueprints for Violence Prevention has identified 11 prevention and intervention programs that meet a strict scientific standard of program effectiveness. Program effectiveness is based upon an initial review by CSPV and a final review and recommendation from a distinguished Advisory Board, comprised of seven experts in the field of violence prevention. The 11 model programs, called Blueprints, have been effective in reducing adolescent violent crime, aggression, delinquency, and substance abuse. Another 18 programs have been identified as promising programs. To date, more than 600 programs have been reviewed.

EBP Substance Abuse Database
The EBP Substance Abuse Database is a small, but growing, database of evidence-based interventions for treating substance use disorders. Interventions were selected according to criteria described on the About EBP page. Each record in the database includes a description of the intervention and its implementation, populations for which it has been shown to be effective, references to supporting literature, the availability of instructional manuals, and author/developer notes and other useful information.

The Evaluation Center’s EBP Metabase
The Evaluation Center’s EBP Metabase v 1.0 is a searchable database of meta-analyses related of mental health interventions. It allows the user to find an intervention related to outcomes of interest and review the evidence of effectiveness.

Matrix of Children’s Evidence-Based Interventions
The NRI Center for Mental Health Quality and Accountability synthesized key literature reviews which summarized the effectiveness of prevention, intervention, and/or treatment programs that can be applied to child and adolescent mental health services. The purpose was not to redefine or create another hierarchy of what constitutes an evidence-based practice vs. a promising practice or emerging practice, but rather to compile a comprehensive list of interventions or programs that have been evaluated or more rigorously tested, and found to have varying degrees of evidence as to their effectiveness.

National Cancer Institute: Research-Tested Intervention Programs
This website allows the user to find research-tested intervention programs and products, review summary information and usefulness/integrity scores for each program, order or download materials to adapt for use in your own program, and obtain readability scores for products distributed to the public.

National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP)
NREPP is a searchable database of interventions for the prevention and treatment of mental and substance use disorders. SAMHSA has developed this resource to help people, agencies, and organizations implement programs and practices in their communities.

Preventing Drug Abuse among Children and Adolescents: Examples of Research-Based Drug Abuse Prevention Programs
To help those working in drug abuse prevention, NIDA, in cooperation with the prevention scientists, presents examples of research-based programs that feature a variety of strategies proven to be effective. Each program was developed as part of a research study, which demonstrated that over time youth who participated in the programs had better outcomes than those who did not. The programs are presented within their audience category (universal, selective, indicated, or tiered).

Social Programs That Work
This site summarizes the findings from well-designed randomized controlled trials that, in their view, have particularly important policy implications — because they show, for example, that a social intervention has a major effect, or that a widely-used intervention has little or no effect. They limit the discussion to well-designed randomized controlled trials based on persuasive evidence that they are superior to other study designs in measuring an intervention’s true effect.

Suicide Prevention Research Center: Best Practice Registry
The purpose of the Best Practice Registry is to identify, review, and disseminate information about best practices that address specific objectives of the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention.

Center for Evidence-Based Practice: Young Children with Challenging Behavior
The Center for Evidence-Based Practice: Young Children with Challenging Behavior is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education Programs to raise the awareness and implementation of positive, evidence-based practices and to build an enhanced and more accessible database to support those practices.

Child Trends
Child Trends is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center that studies children at every stage of development. Their mission is to improve outcomes for children by providing research, data, and analysis to the people and institutions whose decisions and actions affect children, including policy makers, program providers, foundations, and the media. Founded in 1979, Child Trends helps keep the nation focused on children and their needs by identifying emerging issues; evaluating important programs and policies; and providing data-driven, evidence-based guidance on policy and practice. Its work is supported by government, foundation, and private sector funders.

ClinicalTrials.gov
ClinicalTrials.gov provides patients, family members, health care professionals, and members of the public easy access to information on clinical trials for a wide range of diseases and conditions. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), through its National Library of Medicine (NLM), has developed this site in collaboration with all NIH Institutes and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Child Welfare Information Gateway
Child Welfare Information Gateway promotes the safety, permanency, and well-being of children and families by connecting child welfare, adoption and related professionals as well as concerned citizens to timely, essential information. They provide access to print and electronic publications, websites, and online databases covering a wide range of topics from prevention to permanency, including child welfare, child abuse and neglect, adoption, search and reunion, and much more.

CSWE: Evidence-Based Practice
CSWE recognizes that teaching social work students how to access, analyze, interpret, and appropriately employ evidence is critical to effective social work practice. CSWE is collaborating with the Austin Initiative to begin providing more resources for teaching evidence-based practice.

EBP Exchange – UMB School of Social Work
This site is for the free exchange of ideas in regards to evidence-based research and practice and its implications at the University of Maryland School of Social Work.

Evidence-Based Behavioral Practice (EBBP)
The EBBP.org project creates training resources to help bridge the gap between behavioral health research and practice. Professionals from the major health disciplines are collaborating to learn, teach, and implement evidence-based behavioral practice (EBBP).

Evidence-Based Group Work
This site is intended to be a link to research-based evidence about group work. The purpose is to make research evidence available to those who want to make group work demonstrably more effective and beneficial to participants.

The e-Community Forums at The Evaluation Center @ Human Services Research Institute
The Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) Program supports the rigorous scientific evaluation of behavioral health interventions, and the dissemination and implementation of interventions that have strong evidence of effectiveness. The goal is to provide resources for the diverse stakeholders with interest in EBP.

Integrating Evidence-Based Practices into CBCAP
The “Discussion Tool” was produced by FRIENDS to help State Lead Agencies work with their funded programs to facilitate appropriate conversations when considering implementing evidence-based or evidence-informed programs and practices. The Discussion Tool is divided into 7 sections that cover 4 paths programs can follow. The resource includes worksheets that help agencies evaluate capacity, templates for evaluation and implementation planning along with resources for programs to use while they explore existing evidence-based programs and practices.

National Alliance of Multi-Ethnic Behavioral Health Associations (NAMBHA)
The mission of NAMBHA is to collectively promote the behavioral well-being and full potential of people of color and to eliminate disparities in behavioral health services and treatment. NAMBHA works to identify culturally appropriate best practice models.

National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute (NRI)
NRI has useful information about defining evidence-based practices, a directory of resources that describe criteria for defining which practices are evidence-based, and important information regarding the implementation of evidence-based mental health practices.

The National Implementation Research Network
The mission of the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) is to close the gap between science and service by improving the science and practice of implementation in relation to evidence-based programs and practices.

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)
NIMH’s Web site contains information on many mental disorders. The site also provides information on NIMH research, publications, and activities.

National Working Group on Evidence-Based Health Care
The National Working Group on Evidence-Based Health Care represents consumers, caregivers, practitioners, and researchers committed to promoting accurate and appropriate evidence-based policies and practices that improve the quality of health care services in the United States.

The Ohio Substance Abuse and Mental Illness Coordinating Center of Excellence (SAMI-CCOE)
Ohio SAMI-CCOE is a technical-assistance organization that helps service systems, organizations, and providers implement and sustain the Integrated Dual Disorder Treatment (IDDT) model (an evidence-based practice), maintain fidelity to the model, and develop collaborations within local communities that enhance quality of life for consumers of mental health services and their families.

Research and Empirical Applications for Curriculum Enhancement in Social Work (REACH-SW)
REACH-SW is a curriculum enhancement tool designed to support faculty in teaching social work students how to apply evidence-based practice (EBP) approaches to social work practice. The tool is also designed to increase scientific literacy skills of faculty – and thus, students – with respect to finding, understanding, and applying empirical research to social work practice. REACH-SW provides faculty the background information they need to know to effectively teach the application of EBP within a variety of social work courses, including Micro and Macro Practice, HBSE Foundations, Program Evaluation, Policy Analysis, Introduction to Social Work Practice, Advanced Social Work Practice, Introduction to Social Work Research, and many others.

Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine
The IOM Roundtable on Evidence-Based Medicine brings together key stakeholders from multiple sectors – patients, health care providers, payers, employers, manufacturers, policymakers, and researchers – for cooperative consideration of the ways that evidence can be better developed and applied to drive improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of medical care in the United States.

Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE)
The United Kingdom-based SCIE works to disseminate knowledge-based good practice guidance; involve service users, carers, practitioners, providers, and policymakers in advancing and promoting good practice in social care; and enhance the skills and professionalism of social care workers through tailored, targeted and user-friendly resources.

VA Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI)
VA’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI), is designed to translate research discoveries and innovations into better patient care and systems improvements. QUERI focuses on nine high-risk and/or highly prevalent diseases or conditions among veterans: Chronic Heart Failure, Diabetes, HIV/Hepatitis, Ischemic Heart Disease, Mental Health, Polytrauma, Spinal Cord Injury, Stroke, and Substance Use Disorders. VA/HSR&D’s Quality Enhancement Research Initiative (QUERI) works to improve the quality of healthcare for veterans by implementing research findings into routine clinical practice.

TRIP Database

  • TRIP Database (Turning Research into Practice): Performs a simple search in more than 60 databases related to evidence-based resources, allowing rapid identification of the highest quality clinical evidence for clinical practice. You can easily restrict your search to a given level of evidence in the hierarchy.
    Search the TRIP Database

Social Work Policy Institute

Social Work Policy Institute---This page by the "think tank" of the National Association of Social Work provides a rich list of resources for evidence based practice information.