Critical appraisal is the process of assessing the quality of publications chosen for analysis and incorporation into a review. In this step, the appraiser examines the reported research in terms of bias, study design, conduct, and data analysis.
This aims to answer these questions:
References
Provides access to critical appraisal tools for different types of studies including systematic reviews and RCTs.
The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford (UK) provides tools and downloads for the critical appraisal of medical evidence. Sample appraisal sheets are provided together with several helpful examples.
CASP helps people to find and interpret the best available evidence from health research.
The Effective Public Health Practice Project developed the EPHPP Quality Assessment Method and Tool for quantitative studies method. The tool was developed for use in public health, and can be applied to articles of any public health topic area.
An approach to grade the quality of evidence and the strength of recommendations that can be applied across a wide range of interventions and types of studies.
AMSTAR is a 37-item assessment tool used to assess the methodological quality of systematic reviews.
The Institute of Health Economics, Alberta, Canada have developed and implemented two scoring systems to evaluate the quality of the studies potentially eligible for inclusion in reviews: one for quantitative research reports, and one for qualitative research reports.
Temple University Libraries. Tools for critical appraisal. https://guides.temple.edu/systematicreviews/criticalappraisal
A very detailed list of tools for specific appraisal tasks
