Information A. Textbooks Core textbooks summarize current standards of care, based on the experiences of expert clinicians and the results of research studies. Textbooks are expensive and take several years to publish, so information in them may be incomplete or inaccurate if new knowledge has been developed, which is especially likely regarding therapies. Review Articles lth-related Review articles summarize a number of studies on the same topic. It may not be possible to tell what criteria the author used in selecting the studies to be included or excluded. Occasionally you can find structured commentaries on research articles.
Research articles vary in the level of detail given about the study.
You may need to do your own evaluation. Meta-Analyses Systematic reviews use explicit methods to identify, select, and critically evaluate relevant research. Meta-analyses are systematic reviews that combine the results of several studies using quantitative statistics. The World Wide Web is another source to use to find information. It is also a way to discover what the large universe of information on the Web holds about a particular topic.