Back to: Develop Your Research Question

For this course, we’ll just focus on comparing two treatments. In other words, to write a question that fits the format of a typical systematic review, you need to frame it as a comparison between:

The Intervention– the approach you’re evaluating.

The Comparator– the approach you’re comparing the intervention to.

The comparator could be a placebo or a control group, but often it’s a different type of medical treatment or the usual form of care.

These are the I and the C in the PICO (D) process

On the next page, you’ll pick an intervention and a comparator for your question.