Critical Appraisal

Once you locate articles, you'll want to appraise the evidence. Some questions to consider:

1. How serious it the risk of bias?
   • examine specific validity criteria based on study design
   • focus on how well the authors report their methods; note what is missing or unclear
   • look at who funding the study
2. What are the results?
3. Will the results help patient care?

Tools for Critical Appraisal:

• CASP Checklists - Critical Appraisal Skills Programme -  Checklists to help you read and check health research for trustworthiness, results & relevance.
  • Brief video about CASP from St Georges, University of London 
• CEBM - Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine - Critical appraisal worksheets to help you appraise the reliability, importance and applicability of clinical evidence.