What type of research is it?

To be able to ask the right questions about a paper, you need to find out what type of research it is. Read the abstract of the paper to find out what the researchers were trying to find out, and which methods they used.

There are four main types of health research. Research that:

• Evaluates the impact of a treatment or other intervention
  Researchers are often interested in finding out about the health effects of something, for example a new drug, health intervention or a change in the environment. To do this, researchers usually carry out trials.

• Explores risk factors
  Sometimes researchers want to find out what causes differences or changes in health. This could be something we do (e.g. smoking) or something about our environment (e.g. air pollution). To do this, researchers conduct observational studies using survey data or routinely collected data. Observational studies can be called cross-sectional studies, cohort studies, longitudinal studies, or case-control studies.

• Explores how common something is
  Researchers use methods like surveys and analyses of routine data to find out how common health behaviours (e.g. smoking or drinking) or health conditions (e.g. depression or high blood pressure) are. Types of survey include cross-sectional surveys, censuses, and longitudinal surveys. Sometimes researchers carry out a new survey, and other times they use data from a previous survey.

• Seeks to understand people's views, experiences, attitudes and beliefs
  Some studies report on what people think, or what their beliefs about an issue are. For example, a study might look at what people think about a treatment they have been given, what they think caused their illness or whether they were satisfied with a service they received. To do this, researchers usually use qualitative methods, including interviews, focus groups, and ethnography.

Often, research does not fit into neat categories. If you find the questions in your chosen category are not relevant to the paper you are reviewing, you use the back button to return here and choose a different category.

Some research uses a combination of different research methods. This is called mixed-methods research. Reviewing mixed-methods research can be difficult because different methods have different quality concerns. If the paper you wish to review uses mixed-methods, you could decide which method is the dominant method used in the research, and select the appropriate option below. For more information, see our introduction to mixed methods research.

Try to choose the category that best fits the research you are reviewing. If the research you are reviewing does not seem to fall under any of these categories, select Other types of research.