1. KINE 4565 An overview of the final assignment

2. This week
An overview of the first sections of the paper

3. 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

4. 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.

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

6. 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

7. 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?

8. 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

9. 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…

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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)

13. 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

14. Questions?

15. Presentations
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