Let Me Introduce You to INTRODUCTIONS!

(How to Read Research cont.)

In the last two blog entries we talked about what you can and cannot learn from research titles & abstracts. Now, let me introduce you to INTRODUCTIONS/BACKGROUND section of research reports.

  

The introduction/background

“[a] outlines the background of the problem or issue being examined,

[b] summarizes the existing literature on the subject, and

[c] states the research questions, objectives, and possibly hypothesis” (p. 6, Davies & Logan, 2012)

This is the very 1^st section of the body of the research article.  It may or may not have a heading of “Introduction” or “Background” or both.  Both Abstract and Introduction/Background include:

• ·         Problem that the research is investigating &
• ·         Research questions OR hypothesis

In the Intro/Background you will get a more full description of why the problem is a priority for research and what is already known about the problem (i.e., literature review).

Key point #1: Articles & research that are reviewed in the Intro/Background should be mostly within the past 5-7 years.  Sometimes included are classic works that may be much older OR sometimes no recent research exists.   If recent articles aren’t used, this should raise some questions in your mind.   You know well that healthcare changes all the time!!  If there are no recent studies the author should explain.

Key point #2:  The last sentence or two in the Intro/Background is the research question or hypothesis.  If you need to know the research question/hypothesis right away, you can skip straight to the end of the Intro/background—and there it is!

Key point #3: What is the difference between a research question and hypothesis?  A hypothesis is a predicted answer and focuses on one thing causing another thing (i.e., ASA lowers MI risk).   A research question is used when we don’t know enough to guess about the cause and effect, & merely want to describe something. A question may also be used when we want to establish whether 2 things are related to each other, but aren’t ready to identify one as causing the other (i.e., which came 1^st, the chicken or the egg?—these are related, but which was the cause?)

Critical thinking question: One of the following is a hypothesis & one is a research question.  Which is which?

1.   The purpose of this study was to describe the expectations for pain relief of patients with abdominal pain and how their communication with providers relates to their overall pain relief. (Yee et al 2006)

2.  We investigated whether a brief pain communication/education strategy would improve patient pain communication skills. (Smith et al, 2010)

Happy research reading!

Abstracts Are Not Enough! :-)

My last blog post listed the usual sections of a research report (title, abstract, introduction, methods, results, & discussion/conclusion); and I illustrated the amazing things you can learn from only an article title!

This week? Abstracts.   Abstracts are great; abstracts are not enough!

An abstract will not give you enough information to accurately apply the study findings to practice.  An abstract typically summarizes all the other sections of the article, such as  the question the researcher wanted to answer, how the researcher collected data to answer it, and what that data showed.  This is great when you are trying to get the general picture, but you should Never assume that the abstract tells you what you need to know.

Abstracts can mislead you IF you do not read the rest of the article.  They are only a short 100-200 words and so they have to leave out key information.   You may misunderstand study results if you read only the abstract.   An abstract's 33,000 foot level description of a study, cannot reveal the same things that can be revealed in the up-close & personal description of the full article.

So...what is the takeaway?  Definitely read the abstract to get the general idea.  Then read the article beginning to end.  Don't give up reading the full article just because some parts of the study may be hard to understand.  Just read and get what you can. Then try a re-read or get some help understanding any difficult sections.   This is an important step toward EBP.