What is the Formulation of the Research Question in Systematic Review Dr. Nancy Agens, Head, Technical Operations, Pubrica sales@pubrica.com
In Brief Formulating a research question is the challenging task for a researcher while initiating a systematic review. This article explains the different frameworks available for formulating a high-quality research question which includes PICO, SPIDER, SPICE, ECLIPSE. A wellformulated research question needs to have extreme specificity and preciseness that guides the implementation of the systematic review while keeping in mind the identification of variables and population of interest. I. INTRODUCTION For a systematic review, formulating a well-constructed research question is mandatory. The first step in executing a Systematic Review is to formulate the research question. Without formulating a well-focused research question, it can be challenging and time-consuming to identify suitable studies and search for relevant evidence. Forming a good research question is not a straightforward process as it requires engaging with the literature. Well-formulated research questions will guide many aspects during the review process, which includes determining eligibility criteria, search studies, data collection for included studies, and presenting findings. There are different techniques used for formulating a research question. Practitioners of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) often use a specialized framework, called PICO, to form the question and facilitate the literature search. A systematic review question typically focused on narrow parameters and usually fitted into the PICO question format. P – Patient | Population | Problem Copyright © 2020 pubrica. All rights reserved
Most important characteristics of patients. Examples: Gender, age, and disease or condition I – Intervention or exposure Main intervention. Examples: Drug treatment, diagnostic and screening test C – Comparison or control Main alternative. Examples: Standard therapy, placebo, no treatment and gold standard O – Outcome measures What you are trying to accomplish, improve, measure, affect. Examples: Reduced mortality or morbidity, and improved memory For quantitative systematic review question formation, PICO can be used along with the variant such as PICOS (SStudy design), PICOC (C-Context), and PICOT (T-timeframe). A well-formulated review question will assist in determining the inclusion and exclusion criteria, the process of data collection, the design of the search strategy and the presentation of findings. A quality question will allow finding the studyrelated information quickly, that are relevant to the research studies and accurately measures stated objectives. The question also provides you with a checklist for the main concepts to be included in your search strategy. Systematic review questions may be broad or narrow in focus, but it is essential to formulate the research question with care to avoid lacking relevant studies or collecting a potentially biased result set. Several frameworks or models are available to help the researchers develop a research question, and some of the alternatives are outlined below.
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