Choose Your Article
You must select one article from the Assessment Readings folder in your Reading List.
✅ You can reuse your article from Assessment 2, or choose a different one for this task.
🚫 Do not use any article that is not on the approved list — doing so may result in a resubmission or zero marks.
Identify the Study Type
Each article in the list represents a different research design. Knowing the study type will help you choose the correct critical appraisal tool later.
- Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT): Participants are randomly placed into groups to test if a treatment or intervention causes a specific result.
- Case–Control Study: Starts with people who already have a condition (cases) and compares them with people who do not (controls) to look back for possible causes or risk factors.
- Cohort Study: Follows a group of people (a cohort) over time to see how exposure to something (like smoking) affects their outcomes.
- Systematic Review: Collects and analyses results from many studies on the same topic to summarise the overall evidence. Sometimes this includes a meta-analysis, which combines results statistically.
- Qualitative Study: Explores people’s experiences, opinions, or feelings using methods such as interviews, focus groups, or observations.
Tip for Identifying Study Type
- Open the Methods section of the article.
- Look for words such as “randomised,” “cohort,” “case–control,” “systematic review,” or “qualitative.”
- Check how the study collected data:
- Quantitative (numbers, measurements) → likely RCT, cohort, or case–control.
- Qualitative (words, themes, interviews) → qualitative study.
Tip: Identifying the correct study type is the first step in selecting the right critical appraisal tool (CASP, JBI, or CEBM).