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Nursing

A guide for locating resources relevant to assignments in nursing classes.

Levels of Evidence

In the Health Sciences, you will need to critically appraise articles.

Critical appraisal is the process of careful & systematic examination of research to judge its trustworthiness, validity, reliability, value, & relevance to a particular context.

The Evidence Pyramid depicts the hierarchy of literature related to the strength of the evidence.

The Evidence-Based Pyramid depicts a triangular representation of the levels of evidence with the strongest evidence at the top and progressing down through evidence with decreasing strength. At the apex of the pyramid are Systematic Reviews, which are the strongest form of evidence. Under them are lesser strength formats for filtered information including Critically-Appraised Topics (Evidence Synthesis) and Critically-Appraised Individual Articles (Article Synopses). Below that is unfiltered information, the top form being Randomized Controlled Trials. Successive lower levels include Cohort Studies, Case-Controlled Studies, Case Reports and Background Information/Expert Opinion.

When finding sources to answer/support your PICO question, you will want the best evidence available for your topic. However, your assignment's directions can overrule this, use the sources that follow your assignment's directions.

SIFT- The Four Moves

If you want to use information from a website, use the SIFT process to evaluate if the information is reliable.

 

SIFT is a tool to evaluate information S is for Stop, I is for investigate the source, F is for find better coverage and T is for trace the original context

Stop = Pause and ask yourself if you know about the reputation of the site or author before reading it (or sharing it). Also, stopping periodically throughout the process will help you reflect and reevaluate your strategy.

Investigate the source = know about what you are reading before your read it. Take one minute to investigate the author (do they have the expertise or credentials to be an authority on this topic?) and the publisher (are they reputable? what is their agenda?).

  • To learn about the author, do a quick Google search. Many researchers will have a webpage about them on their institution's website.

  • You can often find information about the publisher in the "About" section of the website. Or you can do a quick Google search to read about what others have written about them.

Find better coverage = if you want to know if a claim is true or false, look to other resources that are authorities on the topic. Look to groups, organizations, agencies, and government departments that would be an authority on this topic. 

Trace claims = go back to the original source and see if the claim is accurately presented. By reading the claim in the original context you can decide if the information was taken out of context or not in the source.

Mike Caufield's Web Literacy for Student Fact-Checkers...and Other People Who Care About Facts is the publication that introduced SIFT also called the "Four Moves and a Habit" process. The ebook can be accessed with the link below.

If you are finding health information on websites, make sure you are evaluating it to make sure you are using good information. Follow the steps outlined in "Find Good Health Information" linked below.