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OT 634: Research and Evidence in Clinical Practice

Types of Sources

Types of Sources
  Scholarly Sources Popular Sources
Primary
  • Peer reviewed
  • Published in a scholarly journal
  • Authors do their own experiment and discuss their methods and results
  • When we cite these sources, we cite them for the results of their experiment
  • In the social sciences and humanities, they're historical documents, speeches, artwork, etc.
  • In the sciences, they're people doing their own experiments or research, but not publishing it in  a scholarly journal
  • We don't cite these in our scholarly sources because they're not peer reviewed
Secondary
  • Peer reviewed
  • Published in a scholarly journal
  • Summary/comparison of scholarly primary sources on a given topic.
  • "Systematic Review", "Meta-analysis"
  • When we cite these sources, we cite the conclusions they draw.
  • Magazines, trade publications, news articles, press releases, etc.
  • We don't cite these in our scholarly sources because they don't generate their own findings, only report on them.

 

Heirarchy of Evidence

Pyramid ranking sources. From highest to lowest quality: "Systematic reviews and meta analyses", "Randomized control trials", "Cohort Studies", "Case control studies", "Cross sectional surveys", "Case studies", "Ideas, expert opinions, editorials", and "Anectodal"

Scholarship as Conversation

  • Scholarly articles represent a conversation between scholars as they cite each other's work.
  • A given scholarly work may not represent the only, or even the majority, perspective on the issue at hand.
  • You are entering the middle of the scholarly conversation, not the end.