Understanding Clinical Papers

Understanding Clinical Papers is a popular and well established introduction to reading clinical papers. It unravels the process of evidence-based practice, using real papers to illustrate how to understand and evaluate published research, and it goes on to provide explanations of important research-related topics.

contents

Preface to the First Edition

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the Third Edition

Preface to the Fourth Edition

PART I SETTING THE SCENE: WHO DID WHAT, AND WHY

  1 Some Preliminaries

  2 The Abstract and Introduction

  3 The Aims and Objectives

PART II DESIGN MATTERS: WHAT TYPE OF STUDY IS IT?

  4 Descriptive Studies: Qualitative

  5 Descriptive Studies: Quantitative

  6 Analytic Studies

  7 Intervention Studies

  8 Mixed Methods Research

  9 Studies of Complex Interventions

10 Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

11 Systematic Review of Qualitative Studies

PART III THE CAST: FINDING OUT ABOUT THE SUBJECTS OF THE RESEARCH

12 The Research Setting

13 Populations and samples

14 Research Using Already-Collected Data

15Sampling for Qualitative Research

16 Identifying and Defining Cases

17 Controls and Comparisons

PART IV ESTABLISHING THE FACTS: STARTING WITH BASIC OBSERVATIONS

18 Identifying the Characteristics of Quantitative Data

19 Summarising the Characteristics of Quantitative Data

20 Identifying and Summarising the Characteristics of Qualitative Data

21 Measuring the Characteristics of Participants: Quantitative

22 Measuring the Characteristics of Participants: Qualitative

23 Measuring the Characteristics of Measures

24 Measurement Scales

25 Exploring and Explaining: Topic Guides

PART V ESTABLISHING MORE OF THE FACTS: SOME COMMON WAYS OF DESCRIBING RESULTS

26 Fractions, Proportions, and Rates

27 Risks and Odds

28 Ratios of Risks and Odds

PART VI ANALYSING THE DATA: ESTIMATION AND HYPOTHESIS TESTING

29 Confidence Intervals for Means, Proportions, and Medians

30 Confidence Intervals for Ratios

31 Testing Hypotheses – the p-Value

PART VII ANALYSING THE DATA: MULTIVARIABLE METHODS

32 Measuring Association

33 Measuring Agreement

34 Linear Regression

35 Logistic Regression

36 Poisson Regression

37 Measuring Survival

38 Analysing Qualitative Data

PART VIII READING BETWEEN THE LINES: HOW AUTHORS USE TEXT, TABLES AND PICTURES TO TELL YOU THE STORY

39 Results in Text and Tables

40 Results in Pictures

41 The Discussion and Conclusions

References
Index

DAVID BOWERS, Medical Statistician, University of Leeds Medical School, UK.

ALLAN HOUSE, Professor, Director of Leeds Institute of Health Science, University of Leeds, UK.

DAVID OWENS, Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry, Leeds Institute of Health Science, University of Leeds, UK.

BRIDGETTE BEWICK, Senior Lecturer in Health Research, Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds, UK.