Searching for Evidence

Question 1

What is a primary source?

Answer 1

must be the first disclosure of information; i.e: study article

Question 2

What is a secondary source?

Answer 2

includes most books, review articles, and indexes to the literature; usually summarizes or reviews information

Question 3

What is a peer-reviewed resource?

Answer 3

a form of quality-control that provides high quality publications (not infallible)

Question 4

What is impact factor (IF)?

Answer 4

a measure of a particular journal’s impact based on how often that journal has been cited

Question 5

IF = number of ________ / total number of articles published in past two years

Answer 5

citations in year

Question 6

In research, what is considered the “most difficult” step?

Answer 6

defining the question

Question 7

PICO was developed by _______ for aiding in research.

Answer 7

Sacket et al.

Question 8

What are the four steps of conducting a search?

Answer 8

1. Defining the question
2. Choosing a resource
3. Keyword searching and Classification
4. Search Techniques

Question 9

What are controlled vocabularies? Give two examples.

Answer 9

set of words or phrases used to describe concepts

1. MeSH - Medical Subject Headings
2. EMTREE (Embase)

Question 10

Search techniques include ______ operators, truncation, phrases, parentheses, and explode.

Answer 10

boolean

Question 11

What are Boolean operators?

Answer 11

AND
OR
NOT

Question 12

What is truncation?

Answer 12

using a symbol (*) at the end of a word that tells the engine to retrieve the word stem with different endings

Question 13

How are phrases searched for?

Answer 13

placing quotes around a phrase in order to limit a search to only provide information that is exact to that phrase

Question 14

How are parentheses used in searching?

Answer 14

To group terms and operators in order to control the order of the search

Question 15

What is “explode”?

Answer 15

instructs the search engine to retrieve the information with a broad subject heading that are broken down into narrower subject headings

Question 16

How are study designs arranged on the pyramid of importance/relevance?

Answer 16

TOP
1. Systematic Review/Meta-Analysis
2. Randomized Control Trial (double blind)
3. Cohort
4. Case-Control
5. Case Series
6. Case Reports
7. Editorials/Opinions
8. Animal Research
9. Test Tube (in vitro) research
BOTTOM

Question 17

What is internal validity?

Answer 17

the degree to which the results of a study are likely to approximate to the truth
(bias, confounding, and error are threats to validity)

Question 18

What is external validity?

Answer 18

the extent to which the effects observed are applicable to a broader population
we often leap to generalize far beyond the targeted population

Question 19

The three parts of an appropriate treatment are:

Answer 19

1. Evidence from research
2. Practitioner expertise
3. Patient preferences, values, and rights