To construct clinical questions, researchers will often use what is called the PICO framework. To create a question using PICO, you’ll fill out the following table based on your interests or research, as in this example:
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Research Interest |
|
|
P = Patient/Population/problem |
Rising levels of drug overdose deaths in the Michigan population |
|
I = Intervention |
Incentivizing primary care doctors to prescribe non-opioid painkillers |
|
C = Comparison (what are you comparing your intervention to? Do you want to know if it’s more effective than another intervention? Or if it’s more effective than doing nothing?) |
(In this case, you might have an implicit comparison, means that you're asking whether the intervention is more effective than doing nothing) |
|
O = outcome (how will you know whether your intervention works? What outcome are you hoping for?) |
Statistically significant reduction in deaths caused by drug overdose in Michigan |
You can use the acronym FINER to help you think about what is important in designing a good research project and posing a good question. FINER stands for:
Feasible: A good research question has to be possible to research within the span of time you have, and using the resources you have. If you have only a semester or two, think about how to narrow your research question so that you can complete it within the time you have.
Interesting: A good research question will be about a topic that contributes to the purpose of your field. Your research will be about improving and promoting public health, so any question you ask has to be related to that goal.
Novel: Don’t reinvent the wheel. Even if you are very interested in a particular question, don’t research it if someone else already has, unless you think you can provide a new insight on what is already known.
Ethical: There are many research questions that would be feasible, interesting, and novel to investigate but might endanger your research participants. This could be because they are asked to reveal sensitive information that could impact their lives negatively, because they aren’t given the benefit of a treatment that’s already known to be effective, or because participation in the study itself might be harmful. For example, even though public health is interested in issues of drug addiction, it would be unethical for a researcher to interview subjects who are currently using illegal substances if doing so could get the subjects arrested or imprisoned.
Relevant: Relevance is like a more specific kind of thinking about why your research is interesting to other people in your field. How will the answer to your question specifically help patients or practitioners? For example, you might want to look at how body weight is discussed or portrayed in a particular teen magazine. When you think about your research question, you’ll want to think about who the information will help: will it help primary care doctors talk about body weight with teenage patients? Will it help people to design better treatment programs for teen patients with eating disorders? If you can’t think of any patient or practitioner group that could potentially find your research useful, your question may not be a relevant one.