LibGuides: EBP &amp; PICOT Questions: Levels of Evidence

Research Designs

Understanding Research Study Designs (Univ of MN)
Pros and Cons of Study Designs (Univ of Oxford) Brief comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of study design

Evidence Types

Practice Guidelines
Systematic Reviews

“Clinical practice guidelines are systematically developed statements to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances.” (Institute of Medicine, 1990)
Practice guidelines may come from organizations, associations, government entities, and hospitals/health systems.

Resources for Practice Guidelines

Guideline Central NGC Summaries
Replaces National Guideline Clearinghouse. Includes summaries of key guidelines.
ECRI Guidelines
Clinical practice guideline repository. Must register for free account to access guidelines.
Trip Medical Database
This clinical search engine is designed to allow users to find and use research evidence to support their practice and/or care.
Search for your topic then select guidelines under filter results.

A Systematic Review (SR) is "a literature review focused on a specific research question, which uses explicit methods to minimize bias in the identification, appraisal, selection, and synthesis of all the high-quality evidence pertinent to the question." Source: Online Dictionary of Library and Information Science

Note: "Statistical methods to synthesize the results of the included studies (meta-analysis) may or may not be used in the process." (EFSA, 2015). In other words, not all systematic reviews have meta-analysis. Systematic reviews are not all created equal.

A Systematic Review includes

A clearly stated set of objectives
An explicit, reproducible methodology
A systematic search
An assessment of the validity of the included studies
A systematic presentation of the results

Sources: http://handbook.cochrane.org/ https://archive.org/details/CochraneSystematicReviewsGIFs