When you are beginning to plan your search of the health sciences literature, an important first step is to think about the type of question you are asking.
Background questions usually address What, When, Where, How, etc. These are the types of questions that health sciences students need to ask when they are just getting started in their educational process. However, experienced clinicians ask background questions as well. Some examples of background questions include:
Learn more about developing background questions by visiting our Clickable EBP Pyramid (click "Background Information')
Once you have a background question to search, you can format a research question. Depending on your discipline, there are a number of different question formats that you may use. In this guide, we'll use PICO as an example, but you'll find this approach easily works using other question formats as well.
PICO stands for:
P | Patient, Population, or Problem: What characteristics are relevant to treating this population? |
I | Intervention: What do you plan to do for this group? |
C | Comparison or Control: What will you compare your intervention to? |
O | Outcome: What do you hope the intervention will accomplish? |
When using PICO to create your research question, try to identify information you can fill in for each letter.
Questions: "Would weekly checks of the air within the helmet padding lead to lower concussion rates in high school football players when compared to checking air pressure before the season and again mid-season? Is the evidence enough to require weekly checks of high school football players' helmets?"
Try breaking this question down into PICO concepts:
Population: High school football players who have received head injuries
Intervention: Weekly checks of the air within the helmet padding
Comparison/Control: Compared to checking air pressure before the season and again mid-season
Outcome: Lower concussion rates
In this example, the focus is on high school football players with head injuries. This study could be narrowed even more by selecting a certain football position to study. This study compares weekly helmet checks to only two checks a season. Is there a decrease in concussion rates with weekly checks? If there is enough evidence, should the school district require athletic trainers and football staff to check the helmets weekly? If the school district does change their helmet-checking requirements and schedules, this would be evidence based practice.
Can you think of an example?
The database Embase offers a PICO tool for building and conducting a search. Check out our video tutorial on PICO in Embase to learn more.