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We comment on the 2015 Society for Prevention Research standards of evidence document, summarizing major changes from the previous 2005 Standards, and point to ways in which the Standards could be further improved. We endorse important new standards, such as those on testing the causal theory and mechanisms of the intervention, improved trial reporting standards, and added attention to scale-up research and cost analyses. Despite discussion of replication in the new Standards, we are concerned about the lack of stand-alone replication standards, and the deletion of an explicit requirement for replication before an intervention is considered efficacious. Finally, we are deeply concerned about the lack of attention to the unit or level of aggregation of the intervention target. It is a major conceptual oversight. The unit targeted by an intervention (whether a cell, person, organization, community, state, nation) is a fundamental feature shaping intervention theory, research design, data collection, analyses, effect sizes, diffusion possibilities and patterns, and scale-up issues. Future Standards updates should eliminate the implicit assumption in the current text that effective preventive interventions inherently target individual persons.

A decade ago, the Society of Prevention Research (SPR) endorsed a set of standards for evidence related to research on prevention interventions. These standards (Flay et al., Prevention Science 6:151-175, 2005) were intended in part to increase consistency in reviews of prevention research that often generated disparate lists of effective interventions due to the application of different standards for what was considered to be necessary to demonstrate effectiveness. In 2013, SPR's Board of Directors decided that the field has progressed sufficiently to warrant a review and, if necessary, publication of "the next generation" of standards of evidence. The Board convened a committee to review and update the standards. This article reports on the results of this committee's deliberations, summarizing changes made to the earlier standards and explaining the rationale for each change. The SPR Board of Directors endorses "The Standards of Evidence for Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Scale-up Research in Prevention Science: Next Generation."

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is a relatively recent incarnation in social work's long history of valuing evidence as a basis for practice. Few argue with the ethics and usefulness of grounding practice in empirically tested interventions. Critics of EBP instead focus on how it is defined and implemented. Critiques include what counts as evidence, who makes decisions regarding research agendas and processes, and the lack of attention to context. This essay reflects on such critiques and suggests that social work, as a profession that values human diversity, equality, and self-determination, is well situated to shed light on such debates about EBP. As a profession that supports a person-in-environment perspective, we must examine not only the theory but the practice of EPB in academic, institutional, and societal settings. It is also argued that, owing to our professional mission, it is not enough to acknowledge the risk of oppression and harm; we are obligated to take them seriously and include such potential for harm in our assessment of so-called best practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]