KINE 4565 An overview of the final assignment

This week An overview of the first sections of the paper

1. What is your research question? Should include a type of injury or a population at risk Should include a prevention strategy or defined risk factors The exposure and outcome variables should be mentioned in the research question

A few examples What is (are) the most effective treatments for whiplash-related injuries? Population: people with whiplash-related injuries Exposure: treatments Outcomes: improvement of symptoms, return to work, etc.

A few examples What is the most effective way to prevent patellar tendonopathy in athletes? Population: athletes Exposure: prevention strategies Outcomes: patellar tendonopathy

A few examples What is the most effective way to promote bicycle helmet use in children? Population: child cyclists Exposure: prevention strategies (education, laws, helmet give-aways) Outcomes: children’s helmet use

Why is this topic important/ of interest Rationale for choosing the topic (can be personal, professional, random) What is the burden of injury? Where does it fit in the Haddon Matrix? (pre-event, event, post-event agent, host, environment) Which of the 3 e’s are important to this topic (education, enforcement, environment) Is there controversy, challenges related to this topic?

3. Describe your search strategy and results of your search This section should be fairly short (1 page maximum) Should include where you found the articles (Medline, PubMed, CINAHL, others) Should include your search terms (e.g., single parent, lone parent, injury) How many articles did your search come up with? How many were useful for your specific project? How many did you find from the references in your other articles. Some of the systematic reviews we have gone over in class can serve as guidelines

5. What the studies found This section should make up the bulk of your paper You can organize it in several ways depending on your research question For example, if we look at the question: “What is the most effective way to promote bicycle helmet use in children?” The section might be organized by strategy (NB results are fabricated!!!) e.g., education is one strategy to increase helmet use…..8 studies (A et al 2000, B et al, 1999, C et al 2002) found increases by 10% to 25%. Education works best among wealthy children (B et al 1999)…… In 2 studies (D et al 1998, E et al 2003), education alone was found to have no effect on helmet use…

5. What the studies found, cont For the research question: “What is (are) the most effective treatments for whiplash-related injuries?” It might be best to organize it by treatment, and then by different outcomes (NB results are fabricated!!) E.g., 5 studies examined physiotherapy as a treatment for whiplash (AB et al 1997, AC et al 2004….). In 3 of these, return to work was sooner than for those who did not receive physio. However, in two of the studies looking at pain as an outcome, there was no difference between those who had physio and those who did not.

5. What the studies found, cont For the research question: “What is the most effective way to prevent patellar tendonopathy in athletes?” It might be best to organize it by study design (NB results are fabricated!!) e.g., There were 6 RCTs (BB et al 2000, BC et al 1998…. )of bracing to prevent patellar tendonopathy. None of these studies were blinded, and all found no difference between braced and not braced knees.

5. What the studies found, cont You should highlight the ways in which the studies agree/disagree You should comment on the relationship between study design and strength of the evidence You should comment on the population under study and the generalizability of the results You should consider the results in the context of all the studies you have read If there are trends, you should point them out (e.g., all 6 studies that examined the association between bicycle helmet laws and helmet use report an increase in helmet use subsequent to the enactment of the law)

Some general comments Writing style matters! The style should be somewhat formal (e.g., don’t say ‘this study sucked!) Watch out for spelling and grammatical errors Each section should be labelled If you use sub-sections for the results, label them too (e.g., education and helmet use, legislation and helmet use, helmet give-aways and helmet use) When you report results, use actual numbers and identify what kind of number it is (rate, odds ratio, relative risk, etc.) Pages should be numbered

Questions?

Presentations Close