Scoping & Systematic Reviews

Critical appraisal is the process of carefully and systematically examining research to judge its trustworthiness and its value/relevance in a particular context by providing a framework to evaluate the research. During the critical appraisal process, researchers can:

• Decide whether studies have been undertaken in a way that makes their findings reliable as well as valid, and unbiased
• Make sense of the results
• Know what these results mean in the context of the decision they are making.
• Determine if the results are relevant to their patients/schoolwork/research.

Burls, A. (2009). What is a critical appraisal? In What Is This Series: Evidence-based medicine. 

Critical appraisal is included in the process of writing high-quality reviews, such as systematic and integrative reviews, and for evaluating evidence from RCTs and other study designs.

Information on this page is from John Hopkins University Library

• The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford provides critical appraisal tools, including worksheets and calculators, to assess systematic reviews, diagnostic, prognostic, and RCT article types. 
• Critical Appraisal Skills Programme: CASP provides worksheets to appraise randomized controlled trials, systematic reviews, cohort studies, case-control studies, qualitative research, economic evaluations, diagnostic tests, and clinical prediction rules.
• JAMA Series on Step-by-Step Critical Appraisal: This section links to the 'User's Guides to the Medical Literature' series of articles designed to promote the incorporation of evidence into practice.
• JBI Critical Appraisal Tools: JBI's critical appraisal tools help assess the trustworthiness, relevance, and validity of published papers.

• The revised JBI critical appraisal tool for the assessment of risk of bias for randomized controlled trials

Evidence grading is a systematic method for assessing and rating the quality of evidence that is produced from a research study, clinical guideline, a systematic review, or expert opinion.

More information on Reporting Evidence and Tools for Evidence Grading can be found in the JHU Library Guide.