Commentary on "treatment decisions for children with speech-sound disorders": revisiting the past in EBP

This commentary, written in response to Alan Kamhi's paper, "Treatment Decisions for Children with Speech-Sound Disorders," further considers the "what" or goal selection process of decision making with the aim of efficiency-getting the most change in the shortest time.

My comments reflect a focus on the client values piece of the evidence-based practice (EBP) triad through validating treatment decisions for individual clients using generalization data. Such data are ideal for demonstrating change according to specific benchmarks and suggesting that treatment was responsible for this change. Consideration is also given to deficit profiles and their implications for long-term outcomes when validating the effects of treatment.

Although the abundance of evidence suggests that a variety of treatment approaches are effective for children with speech-sound disorders, less is known about which are most efficient as compared to one another or for which specific children. Practitioners, however, are embracing EBP when they select a treatment by matching the research evidence with a client's profile, collect systematic data, and use those data to demonstrate that change is attributable to treatment.