Critical appraisal is a critical evaluation of research literature. It is essential for informed decision-making.
Critical appraisal evaluates:
Image taken from AIChE webinar: http://www.aiche.org/resources/chemeondemand/webinars/critically-thinking-about-critical-thinking
Cochrane uses the GRADE system to rate the certainty of the body of evidence and to grade the strength of recommendations. More information can be found in the GRADE guidelines, on the Melbourne Grade Centre website, or see the grade guidelines guidance. For systematic reviews, GRADE provides a standardised approach to the appraisal of discrete outcomes from your meta-analysis or meta-synthesis.
Cochrane recommends the following checklists for assessing the risk of bias of the individual studies included in your review, as these checklists work well with the GRADE system:
Following checklists from a range of organisations are available for assessing a variety of study designs:
CASP (checklists for RCT, SRs, qualitative studies, cohort studies, diagnostic studies, case control studies, economic evaluation studies, clinical prediction rule studies)
CEBM (checklists for SRs, diagnosis, prognosis, RCTs, qualitative studies, IPD reviews)
CONSORT (checklist for RCTs)
COSMIN (checklists for PROMs, reliability or measurement error of outcome measurement instruments, study design, reporting)
Dartmouth Biomedical Libraries (checklists for RCTs, SRs, practice guidelines, diagnostic test studies, prognosis studies, harm-etiology studies, qualitative studies)
Health Evidence (checklist for review articles)
JBI (checklists for analytical cross sectional studies, case control, case report, case series, cohort studies, diagnostic test accuracy studies, economic evaluations, prevalence studies, qualitative research, quasi-experimental studies, RCTs, SRs, text & opinion)
McGill Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences (checklist for mixed methods)
NCCMT (checklists for quality assessment of community evidence)
NHLBI NIH (checklists for controlled intervention studies, SRs & meta analyses, observational cohort & cross sectional studies, case control studies, before after studies with no control group, case series).
Critical appraisal tools do not consider the potential impact of racial biases on a paper's quality. This supplementary tool has been developed in order to support appraisers in explicitly addressing racial bias.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Quality Appraisal Tool consists of 14 questions that assess the quality of health research from an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspective.
Acknowledgement - much of the content in this guide has been adapted / copied from Home - Systematic Review - Subject guides at Monash University