DHG 218 / 230: Levels of Evidence

Evidence Based Practice is making clinical decisions with the highest quality information and research available.

You may have been asked previously to find "scholarly" or "peer-reviewed" articles. But even within those categories, there are varying qualities of research.

The quality of evidence increases as you move up the pyramid on the right.

For our purposes, the gold standard is systematic reviews. Systematic Reviews are not original research, rather they use a system or protocol to examine a range of previously released research to reduce errors and bias and examine conclusions. Cochrane protocols is a well known protocol for systematic reviews.

• "Literature Reviews" and other reviews will generally NOT conform to a protocol and may be much more subjective.

Randomized Control Trials are the gold standard for clinical research and evidence based practice.

Sometimes, cohort studies or case studies may be the only research available. But you want to strive for your information to be as high on the pyramid as it can be.