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UGS 302: Art of Asking Questions / Hansen

Search strategy and background information

Learn more about your question

What we know, what we don’t know, what has been tried previously...many background articles can lay this out and provide references to important articles and books you may want to check out.

Keywords

Using an advanced search

How do you brainstorm keywords?

P - Problem/Patient/Population

I - Intervention

C - Comparison

O - Outcome

Let's look at an example. My research question is: Does exercise reduce the symptoms of restless leg syndrome?

P - The problem here is Restless Leg Syndrome. The question is not specific enough to draw a population/patient. It's fairly obvious from the question that we are thinking about a human population, but we won't include that component in our preliminary search. 

I - The intervention is Exercise. Does exercise make a difference? 

C - In this case, the comparison is with those who do not exercise. Let's leave this component out though, as it can be difficult to specify a deficit comparison without mucking up the search with imprecise terms.

O - The obvious outcome here is reduced symptoms. Let's keep this in mind but not include it in the preliminary search. Again, imprecise terms may muck up our search - let's wait and see if we can uncover terminology experts use.

The good news is a decent PICO search strategy starts with the terminology outlined in P and I, giving us:

Restless Leg Syndrome AND Exercise

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