PICO: The Secret Ingredient to Clinical Research: Getting to the Basics of Research

I like to view research as learning something new.

This "something new" may be:

An unstudied topic

New-to-me knowledge

The idea behind research is to satisfy a question or need through engaging in purposeful curiosity. 

Research is an ongoing and circular process.

It follows the research lifecycle starting with searching and discovery and "ending" with publishing your findings. Notice that I put the term 'ending' in quotation marks.

Publishing your findings doesn't end the research, in fact, it will continue to undergo evaluations, revisions, and, ideally, will be used by others. 

Adapted from University of Washington Libraries

The aim of research is to collect evidence on a given topic of study.

The evidence may come from a few different types of studies. This is important to know because there are different levels of credibility based on the type of study you retrieve.

The Pyramid of Evidence is a great visual to use and see the various levels of evidence.

The first thing you should know is that the studies of the highest quality hold the least quantity. These are your systematic reviews of quantitative research studies. The bottom of the pyramid is where you will find evidence of the least quality, but most quantity. This bottom level of evidence are your expert opinions. As an expert of the field, the opinion is probably trustworthy, but it is based on that person's experiences and is not as strong as statistical data or the consensus of multiple physicians. 

The second thing you should know is that, while it is important to always aim for the highest level of available resources, there are times when a strong case study or source from the bottom of the pyramid is sufficient and, even, appropriate for your search need. 

A final important piece of knowledge is to always critically appraise a resource and trust your educational and career experience. If a source from the top of the pyramid doesn't align with what you know to be true, then, perhaps, it is outdated or the review was poorly conducted. Always wear your critical lens and trust your gut.

Research flows on a continuum between gaining background knowledge and retrieving focused resources.

When you are conducting a sensitive search, you will find more results. However, these results may not be focused on your exact topic. That is perfectly acceptable and necessary if you are trying to learn more about something.

When you are conducting a specific search, you will have less results. This is because your results will be limited to your focused question.

Following the example above, if I were to conduct a search on breast cancer in general, I would retrieve a lot of resources providing background information on breast cancer. However, if I conduct a search focused on patients with triple negative breast cancer and the effectiveness of Enhertu, I would have a much smaller list of results that relates directly to my topic of study.

It is perfectly acceptable and encouraged to move through the continuum at any given point in your research. 

Publication Types:

There are several forms of publication types. To gain a better understanding of each, please check out the slide below created by our PBL Librarian, Mercedes!

Need the slide a little larger? Click the image and login with your Rowan account information. This will take you to the PPT.