Understanding research results
This section of PubMed Health gathers resources that explain clinical effectiveness research and/or helps people interpret the results.
Research results and decision making
Applying research results and systematic review findings to your health care choices may seem intimidating. Smart Health Choices: Making Sense of Health Advice (Hammersmith Press, 2008) aims to help you develop the skills to assess health advice and make decisions accordingly. The full text of this book is online here.
Testing healthcare in trials
A treatment is not the only thing that can influence the health of people in a study. For example, one group could be better off at the end just because they were a healthier group of people right from the start. That is why healthcare needs to be tested in formal clinical trials.
How do we know whether a particular treatment really works? Testing Treatments: Better Research for Better Healthcare (2nd ed., Pinter & Martin 2011) addresses this question in a lively and informative way. The full text of this book is online here.
Here are some short resources to help you understand trials:
To help you understand information about the effectiveness of screening:
Clinical effectiveness ("systematic") reviews
A single trial is usually not enough to provide definite answers. Results can vary from one trial to another, and analysis is needed to understand why. Finding and considering the results of all relevant trials is important to sort out what is known and where gaps in knowledge remain.
Here are some resources to help you understand the process of systematically reviewing research results:
- Understanding the basics of systematic reviews
- How IQWiG finds and assesses reviews and produces its information for consumers (German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care)
- AHRQ’s technical methods reports (U.S. Agency for Health Care Research and Quality)
Contact Us
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