Back to: Extract Data

When you’re extracting data from your studies, you’ll want to save time by only extracting the information you really need. But how do you know what’s necessary and unnecessary?

To do this, you’ll actually go back to a concept we talked about in an earlier course.

Remember PICO (D)? You’re going to use it this time to guide your data extraction process.

For every research study, you’ll gather data that answer these questions:

Population: What specific people or conditions are included in this research?

Interventions: What treatments, diagnostic tests, or other interventions/exposures are being studied?

Comparators: What are researchers comparing this intervention or exposure to?

Outcomes: What measures or events are researchers using to evaluate the intervention?

(D)esign: How was this study designed?

Of course, you’ll also gather bibliographic information about each paper: the name of the study, who wrote it, when and where was it published, etc.

Let’s start with the kind of data you’ll want to gather about the population, or the participants, in each study.