Back to: Develop Your Research Question

Let’s say you’re baking a cake. If you have unlimited time and resources, you’ll want to use the best ingredients you can find. The same is true with systematic reviews.

When you’re picking out the type, or design, of the studies to include in your research, you want to include ones with the strongest, most reliable evidence.

How do you know which study designs are most reliable? Researchers often use what’s called the “hierarchy of evidence.”