Appraise - understand results
What is critical appraisal?
Critical appraisal involves critically examining a study to determine its validity, reliability and relevance. It is an important and essential part of the EBP 5 step process. For a more comprehensive overview refer to the critical appraisal for health guide.
It is useful to ask the following three questions when conducting an appraisal:
- Are the results of the study valid?
- Are the results of the study reliable?
- Are the results applicable to my situation? (Saewert & Hagler, 20151).
There are many different appraisal tools that can be used depending on the type of study. See below for some examples.
1. Saewert, K. J., & Hagler, D. (2015). Generating the evidence for health professional education: The five As of the scholarship of learning and teaching - ask, answer, access, appraise and apply. In T. Brown & B. Williams (Eds.), Evidence-based education in the health professions: Promoting best practice in the learning and teaching of students (pp. 67-80). London: Radcliffe.
Critical appraisal tools & guides
There are a number of checklists / tools available Internet to assist in the critical appraisal of evidence.
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CASP checklists This link opens in a new windowThis set of eight critical appraisal tools are designed to be used when reading research, these include tools for Systematic Reviews, Randomised Controlled Trials, Cohort Studies etc.
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Centre for Evidence Based MedicineUniversity of Oxford - contains useful tools and worksheets for the critical appraisal of different types of medical evidence.
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How to use the Evidence (Australian National Health and Medical Research Council) This link opens in a new windowThis handbook focuses on how to evaluate and use the evidence gathered from a systematic literature review to inform the development of evidence-based clinical guidelines
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International Centre for Allied Health Evidence - University of South Australia This link opens in a new windowA comprehensive list of critical appraisal tools available for use.
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PRISMA This link opens in a new windowSystematic reviews & meta-analyses. Includes links to PRISMA flow diagram and checklist.
Key EBP statistics
Recommended resources
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Understanding health research: a tool for making sense of health studiesThis tool will guide you through a series of questions to help you to review and interpret a published health research paper.
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Duke University: Explaining the results This link opens in a new windowIncludes videos & articles on ARR, NNT, RR, RRR Odds Ratio & more
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What is …? This link opens in a new windowBrief explanations of hot topics in evidence-based healthcare. Statistics topics include confidence intervals and p-values, hazard ratios, sensitivity analysis and more
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CEBM Glossary This link opens in a new windowFind definitions for key statistical terms used in Evidence-Based practice
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CEBM - University of Oxford This link opens in a new windowNumber Needed to Treat (NNT)
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The CONSORT Statement This link opens in a new windowRecommendations for reporting randomized trials, to facilitate complete and transparent reporting, and to aid critical appraisal and interpretation.