Understanding the basics related to evidence-based and promising practices is a key responsibility of administrators managers, and other professionals who oversee education and human services. These leaders are often at least partly responsible for identifying, selecting, implementing, and evaluating positive support practices. In addition, professionals in administration and management may be in a position to advocate for new positive support practices.

Promising Practices

Promising Practices refer to programs that include measureable results and report successful outcomes, however, there is not yet enough research evidence to prove that this program or process will be effective across a wide range of settings and people. A number of positive support practices may be considered promising practices. This means that it is even more important to continually assess the effectiveness of positive support practices that are implemented.

Evidence-Based Decision Making

Evidence-based decision making refers to the use of data-based decision making in educational and human service settings to assess, evaluate, and improve the effectiveness of positive support practices. Teams using evidence-based decision making to evaluate the effectiveness of positive support on a continual basis evaluate each person’s progress to confirm that the strategies employed increases quality of life and decreases challenging behavior. Evidence-based decision making is used at an organization level to monitor outcomes across all of the people benefiting from positive support practices.