Literature Reviews: systematic searching at various levels
This guide briefly looks at some of the different types of reviews to help you determine what kind of review you actually need to do and where to start
This set of eight critical appraisal tools are designed to be used when reading research, these include tools for Systematic Reviews, Randomised Controlled Trials, Cohort Studies, Case Control Studies, Economic Evaluations, Diagnostic Studies, Qualitative studies and Clinical Prediction Rule.
These are free to download and can be used by anyone under the Creative Commons License.
The MMAT is a critical appraisal tool that is designed for the appraisal stage of systematic mixed studies reviews, i.e., reviews that include qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods studies. It permits to appraise the methodological quality of five categories to studies: qualitative research, randomized controlled trials, non-randomized studies, quantitative descriptive studies, and mixed methods studies
This link will take you to a collection of critical appraisal tools from the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford.
It includes worksheets in different languages; PICO critical appraisal sheets; and an Explanations & Examples sections about: Pre-test probability, SpPin and SnNout, Likelihood Ratios, and NNTs
This is a collection of resources on critical appraisal from Temple University and includes checklists, information about grading the strength of the evidence, and also critical appraisal checklists by study design type
This webpage has a series of links brought together by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and is part of SIGN (the Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network)
This guide provides links to a wide variety of appraisal checklists under the headings of: Systematic literature reviews of primary research studies; Intervention experimental studies; Observational studies; Qualitative views and opinions studies; Diagnostic accuracy studies; Economic evaluation studies; Assessing a body of research with different study designs; Establishing study type
Feedback or suggestion
From the website: "This is a collection of tools for identifying, assessing and applying relevant evidence for better health care decision-making. The appraisal tools are adapted from the Users' Guides series prepared by the Evidence Based Medicine Working Group and originally published in JAMA"
(This is from the University of Alberta. It was last updated in 2013.)