Introduction

Note: if you want to gain a certificate for completing this course, you will have to create an account and log in as a student.

'Critical Appraisal is the process of carefully and systematically examining research to judge its trustworthiness, and its value and relevance in a particular context.' This quote comes from the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP). As they go on to say, 'Critical appraisal skills are important as they enable you to assess systematically the trustworthiness, relevance and results of published papers. Where an article is published, or who wrote it should not be an indication of its trustworthiness and relevance.'

This does not mean criticising what is published, but assessing the value of what is published.

There are a number of tools available for the critical appraisal of published papers, and we will demonstrate them as they are applied to various aspects of clinical and public health practice as well as in the broad field of evaluation.

The art of critical appraisal can also be very valuable as a teaching method to identify the strengths, weaknesses and applicability of various research designs.

We suggest that you explore the various tools shown in the sections below. These tools are all slightly different as they can be applied in different settings. In many ways it does not matter which tool you use - the important thing is to take a structured approach to critical appraisal, and use whichever tool you feel is relevant.

How to navigate the course

Each section comprises a set of resources that we think you will find interesting - click on the collections of resources in each section. There is a forum in each topic for reflection, and there is a quiz at the end to check your understanding of the concepts.

We encourage you to reflect on what you have learned or comment on the course. When you click on the hyperlink in each topic labelled reflection, you will be able to add a new topic or respond to a previous one. You may want to share your learning from this and other readings, comment on the topics from your own experience, comment on others' posts, or provide feedback on how we can improve the content and presentation.

In the final section you will see that you can gain a Certificate of Completion - the requirements for this are to access the resources and post a reflection in each section.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.