Preface

Evidence-based practice is a growing influence in exercise science and sports medicine. This is most evident in the profession of athletic training. In athletic training, competencies have been added to accreditation standards that require evidence-based practice to be taught in all accredited curriculums. Similarly, the athletic training Board of Certification has added evidence-based practice as a category required to maintain certification through continuing education. Exercise science programs have less formal mechanisms for including evidencebased practice in their educational structure or credentialing, but the inclusion of scientific principles is implied by its name. Additionally, professional organizations such as the National Strength and Conditioning Association present principles of evidence-based practice in their mission statements.

Regardless of the specific profession with which you identify, extending scientific knowledge into professional practice is becoming increasingly important. It is also becoming the expectation of our clients and patients. Thus, the purpose of this book is to provide you with the tools needed:

• to ask clinically relevant questions

• to understand the different types of research available to practitioners and identify the resources applicable to the needs of specific clients and patients

• to critically evaluate the quality of those resources

• to synthesize those resources into a meaningful outcome for your client or patient.

Several features have been included in the book to help facilitate your understanding of evidence-based practice principles:

The Where Have You Been? section occurs before the chapters to highlight content that has been previously presented in the book. It is intended to give a summary perspective and set the stage for the upcoming chapter.

Each chapter starts with an overview called Where Are You Going? This is a continuation of the Where You Have Been? section and sets up the chapter ahead. It is useful for getting the big picture before tackling the details of the chapter.

Research is an interconnected set of steps that leads to an outcome. Because of its interconnections, it can often be perceived as a maze. The Connections feature is designed to connect topics in one chapter to a related topic in another chapter. The hope is the reader will be able to relate connected ideas more quickly for a greater understanding.

Producing research and applying research often involve choices and compromises. Pros and Cons is a feature that points out these choices and addresses the advantages and disadvantages of each.

The Critical Consumer is a feature that points out a critical component on which the consumer of research should focus. The goal is to emphasize research elements that can be easily overlooked as unimportant but should not be. Overlooking these elements often leads to misuse of the information by the practitioner.

At selected points in each chapter are Retention Questions. These questions are designed to challenge the reader by emphasizing the key components of previously presented material.

At the end of each chapter is Trust and Apply. This feature provides a research article to be retrieved and read by the reader. It also includes a set of questions related to the article. The goal is to provide a directed exercise by which the reader can apply the content of the chapter to actual research.

The final feature is the Research Scavenger Hunt. For this feature the reader must follow the instructions and find a research article that meets the criteria. This feature has enough flexibility to allow the reader to select an article that addresses a practice problem of his or her interest.

All these features together are intended to help you learn the principles and applications of evidence-based practice and make you into the best professional you can be. We hope you find this book to be an effective tool in your professional education.