This course is delivered by the Researcher Academy for the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
The Researcher Academy courses are very popular and the majority are run in both semesters to give you the opportunity to attend at a time of the year that suits you. Semester 1 courses will be available for booking from the second week of October and Semester 2 courses from the second week of February.

Target Audience

Postgraduate Research Students and Research Staff in the Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences only.
This course is part of the M&HS Faculty Training Programme/N-trans training programme and is convened by Researcher Academy.

Process

This course uses a blended delivery approach including asynchronous (self-study) and synchronous (live webchat). Total length of the course is 3.5 hours.
Asynchronous content: pre-recorded tutor presentation and reading of a paper. Total time: 2 hours
Synchronous content: Interactive 1.5 hour webchat with tutor-led delivery and group discussions. There will be a pre-reading task for completion in advance of joining the webinar (approx 1 hours, depending on reading speeds) The example will be discussed and critiqued during the session.

Follow on coursework (optional)
The workshop has optional coursework associated, where an additional 2 training points can be achieved. Please register separately for the coursework under Critical Analysis of Scientific literature - coursework - credits will be awarded on submission of the coursework to your supervisor.

Course description

This course begins with a session in which students are given a background to concepts of critical analysis, and a structured introduction to the principles of how to critically appraise a scientific paper.

This course focusses on literature published for research that is clinical in nature.

Aims
To help you to read and critically appraise published information.

Objectives
By the end of the course you should be able to:

• identify those elements that should be present in a good paper
• assess whether the experimental method was appropriate
• know whether the methods of analysis used were appropriate
• judge whether the conclusions drawn were appropriate to the results
• know how to assign significance to different publication

 Related courses

M&HS Faculty Training Programme/N-trans

• Critical Appraisal of the Scientific Literature: non-Clinical focus (online)
• Critical Appraisal of the Scientific Literature: Clinical focus (online)
• Critical Appraisal of the Scientific Literature: Clinical focus (classroom)
• Critical Analysis of Scientific literature - coursework
• Introduction to Systematic Reviews (online)
• Quantitative Evidence Synthesis (online)
• Approaches to Qualitative Evidence Synthesis (online)

 Researcher Academy- Researcher development programme

• Introduction to the Literature review Process (online moderated course)

Pre-Requisites This session may be recorded. If a recording is kept of the session, then please note, that it may be made available to the wider University of Nottingham researcher community.