EBVM Toolkit 13: evidence summary checklist

Introduction

Critical appraisal is a process which is used to help you identify the strengths and weakness of a research paper.  Understanding how appropriate the study design is for the question you are seeking to answer, how well the study was carried out, and how good the reporting in the paper is helps you to assess whether the paper is likely to provide reliable evidence.  

This page is designed to help you appraise an evidence summary, such as a Knowledge Summary or Critically Appraised Topic (CAT), which are short critical summaries of the best available information on a defined clinical question. These summaries are intended to provide a pragmatic approach to summarising the evidence on a specific clinical question and as such will seek to include the most relevant evidence rather than review all evidence on a topic (see Systematic Review). Answering the questions below will help you to reflect on how valid the results might be, how well reported they are and whether they are applicable to your local circumstances.

Evidence summary checklist

For each question think about whether the answer is yes, no or not sure and what your reasoning is for that answer.

1. Is the summary answering a question, or is it based on a clinical scenario, which is relevant to your practice?

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2. Did the summary address a clearly focused question?

Is there a clear question; can the Patient, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome (PICO) be identified?

3. Do you think the search would have found the most relevant and important papers?

Look for search methods (strategy and search terms) and the databases used.

For information on compiling a search strategy see Toolkit 2: Finding the best available evidence to answer the question [link needed]

4. How recent was the search?

Is there likely to be more recent evidence that has not been included?

5. Did the authors select the right papers to review or appraise?

Were the inclusion and exclusion criteria clear? Did the papers selected address the question and have an appropriate study design?

6. Did the authors do enough to critically assess the quality of included studies?

Is the process of assessment described? Was the assessment carried out by more than one author? Have the authors discussed the strength of evidence?

7. Is there a clear summary of the evidence?

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8. Does the evidence summary include a clear “clinical bottom line”?

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9. Can the results be applied to your practice?

Is the review relevant to your patient population? Are there any differences between your patients and the patients in the study?

10. Was the summary peer reviewed?

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Try it out yourself

You could use any of the evidence summaries found on the following websites to try out the questions:

Veterinary Evidence

BestBETs for Vets