This one-day course aims to improve your ability to critically appraise published research - a key skill for anyone involved in using and/or undertaking research.
You'll look at the importance of defining a meaningful research question, and the key factors involved in answering a research question in an efficient and valid way.
The topics covered will help you design your own research study and/or evaluate existing published material.
COURSE CONTENT
- Defining a research question
- Observational and experimental study designs
- Sampling and randomisation
- Bias and confounding
- Research protocols, checklists and records
- Competing study designs
- Displays and analysis of data
- Common pitfalls in analysis
- Reporting of results
- Validity of the results with respect to the research question
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this course you should be able to:
- understand when critical appraisal might be useful
- access relevant web resources and checklists
- understand the strengths and limitations of checklists for appraisal
- understand how to evaluate the analyses performed by others
- identify the components of a research question
- understand different approaches to addressing a defined research question and evaluate the use of these
- recognise which statistical tests are appropriate in different situations