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DOH305 Research Skills Guide

Developing a research question

It can be useful to express your research topic as a question. That way you can focus clearly on exactly what you need to know and work out the concepts you need to search for.

The research question should be:

  • relevant to the patient or the problem
  • formulated in such a way as to help with the search for an answer.   

Using a question framework such as PICO can help you pinpoint your question and from there your search strategy.

The PICO question framework

PICO

The PICO question framework tool is commonly used to formulate clinical questions around interventions and their efficacy. The PICO letters each stand for a key concept that you'll be looking for in the literature to help you answer the question:

P Patient/Population/Problem Start with the patient, or group of patients, or problem
I Intervention What is the proposed intervention?
C Comparison What is the main alternative, to compare with the intervention (there may not be one)
O Outcome

What is the anticipated, or hoped-for, outcome?

Example Topic

Does the chewing of xylitol gum assist in decreasing the incidence of caries in children?

P Patient/Population/Problem children
I Intervention Xylitol gum
C Comparison No xylitol gum
O Outcome Decrease in incidence of caries

Please note: the information provided on this page is for demonstration purposes. Please refer to your subject outline for full details and requirements of your assessment task.

If you want to learn more about PICO and other question formulation techniques take a look at Evidence-Based Practice Step 1 Ask

Find additional keywords

Dictionaries and encyclopaedias can help you to find additional keywords and get an overview of the concept.

Oxford Reference Online is a huge repository of subject-specific dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and other reference-type material.

Think of synonyms for your topic's main concepts, the use of synonyms helps to broaden your literature searching e.g.:

Children = child, youth, teenager

Caries = "tooth decay", decay, cavities

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