Critical appraisal enables the identification of research articles which are sufficiently well-designed to inform practice. The technique consists of the identification of studies which cross a quality threshold followed by the extraction of their most important points.

The process involves :

• systematically evaluating scientific literature ;
• identifying original research or meta-analyses which are methodically sound ;
• selecting the items from the previous step which have a useful application in your daily work.

The application of the critical appraisal process results in the removal of barriers between research and practice and thus, supports the development of evidence based practice.

Retrieved research articles need to be assessed before a decision is made about their re-use. The three key principles in critically appraising research articles are :

• validity
  • Validity applies both to the design and the methods of research. Validity in data collection means that findings truly represent the phenomenon the researcher claims to measure.
• reliability
  • Reliability is the measure of how consistently a research study or instrument accomplishes its intended purpose. It is synonymous with the consistency of a test, survey, observation, or other measuring device.
• relevance
  • Relevance concerns whether a piece of research responds to some genuine need. In other words, are the results of academic interest only or is there a practical application for the findings?

Refine
Condense the knowledge into concise and relevant ‘nuggets’ that represent the key insights, lessons learned and practices of the knowledge sources. If multiple sources of knowledge are harvested, identify common and opposing knowledge and highlight these.