All Roseman University campuses will close on Tuesday, November 26, at 5 pm for Fall Break. Campuses will reopen for regular
hours on Monday, December 2.
This is an exceptionally dynamic, fast-paced, and collaborative period for research. In this situation, critical appraisal skills have never been more essential.
Critical appraisal is the process by which you assess research for the methodological quality, identify the risk of bias and the strengths or weaknesses, and check that the data analysis and the way results are reported is appropriate.
Some published literature on COVID-19 has already been retracted.
Systematic reviews are a research methodology designed to use systematic search strategies to minimize bias in locating all research on a focused research question, critically appraise that research, and synthesize the findings.
The quality of a systematic review depends on the quality of the existing research it locates and reviews. Essentially, garbage in = garbage out.
While many systematic reviews on COVID-19 have already been published, we encourage all researchers to use extreme care in critically appraising the quality of these (and all) systematic reviews. This applies as well to all evidence synthesis projects, including clinical guidelines, consensus guidelines and statements, rapid and living reviews, etc.
It is possible to use methodology similar to the systematic review process in a rapid review processes to continually synthesize existing research or to develop a dynamic living map of the literature.
Protocol Registries for Systematic Reviews