The stuttering treatment research evaluation and assessment tool (STREAT): Evaluating treatment research as part of evidence-based practice

Purpose: This article presents, and explains the issues behind, the Stuttering Treatment Research Evaluation and Assessment Tool (STREAT), an instrument created to assist clinicians, researchers, students, and other readers in the process of critically appraising reports of stuttering treatment research. Method: The STREAT was developed by combining and reorganizing previously published recommendations about the design and conduct of stuttering treatment research. Conclusions: If evidence-based practice is to be widely adopted as the basis for stuttering assessment and treatment, procedures must be developed and distributed that will allow students, clinicians, and other readers without specialized knowledge of research design to critically appraise treatment research reports. The STREAT is intended to be such an instrument: It represents the consensus of previous methodological recommendations; it is consistent with and complements existing recommendations in evidence-based medicine and in the broader science of treatment outcome evaluation; and it is formatted into a single instrument for ease of use.