Critical appraisal

Format: Lessons

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: View the Lesson

Target Audience: Postgraduate and professional

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Undergraduate

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Short Description:

University of New South Wales Medical Statistics Tutorial 4 addresses Critical Appraisal.

Key Concepts addressed:

• 1-7 Beware of conflicting interests
• 2-2 Comparison groups should be similar
• 2-8 Consider all of the relevant fair comparisons
• 2-17 Don’t confuse “statistical significance” with “importance”

Details

By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to:

• Define the term ‘critical appraisal’
• Summarise the purpose of critical appraisal in clinical practice
• Discuss the purpose of randomisation and blinding
• Distinguish allocation concealment from blinding
• Identify both adequate and inadequate randomisation methods
• Define bias and confounding in terms of clinical studies
• Correctly identify the study factor and outcome factors in a journal article
• Critically appraise a paper about the effectiveness of a therapy