Evidence-Based Practice as a Media Mentorship Decision-Making Framework for Youth with Disabilities

​​Despite youth with disabilities engaging in higher levels of recreational screen time than their general education counterparts, the needs of youth (and the families and educators who support them) are rarely addressed within media research and subsequent media recommendations. For professionals supporting individuals with disabilities, such limited media guidance is problematic given that empirical evidence alone does not guarantee that media recommendations will benefit the needs of these individuals. This entry addresses this need by examining the utility and applicability of an evidence-based practice (EBP) model to aid professionals and educators tasked with providing media mentorship to address the complex needs of youth across a spectrum of abilities within an evolving media landscape. Primarily conceptualized for healthcare practitioners, EBP is a decision-making model integrating the best available evidence from empirical research and clinical expertise to develop treatment recommendations tailored to an individual’s needs and preferences. As a result, EBP has the potential to help media mentors evaluate and integrate high-quality media effects research with professional expertise necessary to curate media recommendations for youth with disabilities, thus strengthening the research-practice pipeline. This entry describes the challenges media mentors may face, before presenting a primer of the EBP process (complete with three case studies) illustrating how EBP can be used to meet the media needs of youth with disabilities. Authors reflect on the evaluative process, including areas of debate and real-life challenges media mentors may face when implementing EBP.