 Hi, my name is Hannah Schmellen and I am a librarian at Ohio University Libraries. This video covers how to evaluate journal articles and health-related studies grounded in evidence-based practice. This video will briefly discuss evidence-based practice and why it's important, provide a template on how to evaluate a journal article quickly, and provide guidelines on how to evaluate slash appraise health-specific research studies. Why is evaluating resources so important? In general, the ability to evaluate information gives you the power to make good decisions, no matter the situation. From a medical point of view, I will let Dr. Duprelle speak to the topic. In the era of evidence-based practice, or evidence-based medicine, one of the most important skills a physician, or a health medical professional, needs is the ability to analyze scientific literature critically. This is necessary to keep medical knowledge up-to-date and to ensure optimal patient care. Briefly, MS-based practice comprises of three concepts and a five-step workflow to ensure the best of clinical decision-making. E.B.P. utilizes clinical expertise, the best research evidence, and patient values. When you are using the best research evidence, there is a five-step process to use. Step one, ask a question. Step two, search. Step three is to critically appraise, which is what we'll be focusing on in this video, and is defined as critically appraising that evidence for its validity, which is the closeness to the truth, its impact, size of the effect, and applicability, which is the usefulness in our clinical practice or to your question. Step four is implementation, and step five is evaluate, meaning evaluating the effectiveness of this process and your implementation. To find out more information about MS-based practice, visit my E.B.P. guide. My MS-based practice guide can be found from the library's homepage. What you'll do first is drop down out of those articles plus to subject and course guides and just type in E.B.P., which is of course short for MS-based practice. You can then click on the first option you'll see, and that will take you to the home page of my guide. Okay, in the grand scheme of things, there are levels to evaluating an article, starting with when you first run your search and you're making decisions about what articles to actually read. This is the casual phase, where you're looking for relevancy to your topic and ensuring the abstract is clear and promising. Next is the consider phase. This is when you actually get to the full text of the article and decide if it's something you would actually use. In this phase, you should check the author and journal's credibility, make sure the research, question, methods, and conclusion are clear and appropriate, and double check that the author has evaluated the relevant literature to their problem and have cited those references in their work. The final phase is critical or critical appraisal. This is when you really dive into a research study to ensure and ask harder questions about it. Is it biased? Is the research methodology appropriate and reproducible? Are the results valid and transparent? Let's talk about those first two phases more in depth and the key components of evaluating a journal article quickly. Here I have supplied a table that I have made that reflects how I peruse a journal article quickly and what components of the article I am looking for. You will also see examples of what is acceptable and what is questionable for each of the components listed. To see this table as a PDF, please visit my evidence-based practice guide or the library research process guide. You'll find a PDF to this on both places. The casual phase represented in yellow at the top of the table. Remember, this is where you look over the abstract for clarity and relevance to your topic to see if you are interested in the full text and learning more about the article. At this point, I will often jump to the discussion or conclusion to submit my decision to read the whole article if it's easily available. Then you move into the consider phase. Here is where you should be reviewing the introduction or background to ensure the author has a solid rationale for their study and have legitimate references cited throughout. Also, the method of the study needs to be sound by detailing their entire process and design. The research method needs to be appropriate for the question type. Let's take a quick look at an abbreviated pyramid of evidence. Listed are study types, and the further at the pyramid you go, the higher the level of evidence. Each level seeks to answer a different type of question. Randomized control trials or RCTs have low bias because of their randomization and control. Often qualitative related questions will be case studies or observational studies listed without controls. To review study types, see my evidence-based practice guide again, and it will talk about levels of evidence as well as different study types. The last phase of evaluation is critical. Critical appraisal is the process of carefully and systematically assessing the outcome of scientific research or evidence to judge its trustworthiness, value, and relevance in your context. Critical appraisal looks at the way a study is conducted and examines factors such as internal validity, generalizability, and relevance. This is when you really question the intentions and the methodology of the article. If it's a research study, how good are the basic components of the study? How accurate and valid are the measurements? Is the analysis of the data accurate? Is the data relevant to my research question? Are the conclusions based on validity of the data analysis? Second, in what ways does the article contribute to the understanding of the problem? Is it useful for actual practice? What are the strengths and limitations and do they list the limitations? Does the article relate to the specific question I'm actually developing? To help answer these questions, see my evidence-based practice guide. Under critical appraisal, there you will find stats calculators, methodology checklists, and other tools to help apply to your research articles to check their validity. There you will also find all my contact information. And feel free to reach out with questions.