Week 1 summary

Congratulations on completing Week 1!

This week, we covered two key areas: understanding the hierarchy of evidence and study designs and developing effective search strategies.

Key takeaways:

Study designs align with research questions:

• Therapeutic questions → RCTs (for unbiased comparisons)

• Diagnostic questions → Cross-sectional studies (for test accuracy)

• Prognostic questions → Cohort studies (to track outcomes over time)

• Etiologic questions → Cohort studies (to explore risk factors)

• Effective search strategies begin with a clear research question (using the PICO model). We explored techniques like Boolean operators and database selection (e.g., PubMed, Cochrane) to locate high-quality evidence efficiently.

These foundational skills will help you ask the right questions and find relevant evidence. Next week, we’ll focus on critical appraisal tools to evaluate study quality. See you then!