Literature Reviews for the Health Sciences: Research Question

The PICOT research question format is a helpful approach for summarizing research questions that explore the effect of therapy in health-related research

• Population refers to the sample of subjects you wish to recruit for your study - consider the age, sex, ethnicity, socioeconomic status etc.
• Intervention refers to the treatment that will be provided to subjects enrolled in your study - therapeutic measure, medication, diagnostic test etc.
• Comparison or control identifies what you plan on using as a reference group to compare with your treatment intervention. Many study designs refer to this as the control group - another intervention, placebo, standard of care, diagnostic gold standard. (Not always needed)
• Outcome represents what result you plan on measuring to examine the effectiveness of your intervention - the desired outcome should be measurable
• Time describes the duration for your data collection - for example "in the first 4 hours post-op" (not always needed)

PICOTT includes the elements of the PICOT research framework, but adds the types of studies that will be looked at to answer the research question, e.g. randomised controlled trials, cohort studies etc.

SPICE can be used for quantitative studies. SPICE stands for 

• Setting (where?), 
• Perspective (for whom?), 
• Intervention (what?), 
• Comparison (compared with what?) 
• Evaluation (with what result?)

Sample topic: What are the coping skills of parents of children with autism undergoing behavioural therapy in schools?

S - Schools

P - Parents of children with autism

I - Behavioural therapy

C - None

E - Coping skills

PICo

PICo is a modified version of PICO(T) used for qualitative research questions

• Population - what are the characteristics of the patient or population? What is the condition or disease you are interested in?
• Interest - what is the phenomena of interest? A defined event, activity, experience or process?
• Context - what is the setting or distinct characteristics?

Example PICo question: 

What are caregivers' experiences with providing home-based care to patients with HIV/AIDS in Africa?

P - Caregivers providing home-based care to persons with HIV/AIDS

I - Experiences

Co - Africa

The SPIDER framework is an alternative search strategy tool (based on PICo) for qualitative/mixed methods research.

• Sample - who is the sample or population of interest?                                                                                   
• Phenomenon of Interest - what is the phenomena of interest? A defined event, activity, experience or process?
• Design - what types of study methods are you interested in?
• Evaluation - what are the evaluation outcomes? (May be subjective - opinions, feelings etc.)
• Research type  -  what type of research are you interested in? Qualitative or mixed method (qualitative & quantitative)?

Sample topic: What are the experiences of women undergoing IVF treatment?

S - Women

PI - IVF treatment

D - Questionnaire or survey or interview

E - Experiences or views or attitudes or feelings

R - Qualitative or mixed method

This framework is useful for questions relating to health policy and management issues. Expectation encourages reflection on what the information is needed for, i.e. improvement, innovation or information. Impact looks at what you would like to achieve e.g. improve team communication (3)

• Expectation - what does the search requester want the information for
• Client group 
• Location 
• Impact - what is the change in the service, if any, which is being looked for? What would constitute success? How is this being measured?
• Professional involved 
• Service - for which service are you looking for information? For example, outpatient services, nurse-led clinics, intermediate care