Identifying key research in your results and summarizing

 

So now you should have been able to find a manageable amount of relevant articles from your search. Now you need to have a look through and see which articles might be worth reading.

A good place to start with this is in the abstract of the article, which is normally free to access and gives a brief overview of the subject, their methods and their findings. Sometimes we are unable to access the full journal without a subscription, but this is ok, we can still draw some conclusions from the abstract.

There are different levels of evidence available which is also a useful thing to look at in the abstract. The video below describes this in more detail:







[5]

When looking at a systematic review it is important to look at the credibility of the review.[6] This can be done by reviewing the following: [6]

 	
Did the study design or execution lead to any misleading results?
 	
Was the eligibility criteria appropriate?
 	
Did the authors do a thorough literature search?
 	
Was all the results sufficiently summarized?

So you have found a great article that is relevant and is a good level of evidence, what now? You should share this with colleagues or in the discussion forum of the course you might be taking in Physiopedia. What people need to know is a short summary of 1 or 2 sentences with the main points from the article, with a reference to the article so we can go and find it. Click here on how to reference a piece of work.

 
Resources
Introduction to literature searching

Use this template to help you through this simple literature searching:

Template: Simple_Literature_Search

Other Physiopedia pages which may be of use:

 	
Implement the evidence
 	
Evaluate the outcome


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