Developing and Analyzing Research

QuestionsSearch Strategies for

Environmental Health Research

Objectives

Review the stases method for refining scope of a research question

Apply the stases method to assigned topics and map questions to potential resources

Review two documented strategies for assessing and analyzing research questions: FINER and PICOT

Apply these strategies to actual research questions

Use controlled vocabularies to identify relevant terms to use in a search

The Stases Approach

Any arguer who wants to enter an ongoing public or academic debate needs first to identify what points have been agreed upon, what points have been in contention, and which of them to address. The standard but often bewildering advice to ‘narrow the topic’ reflects this need to specify an issue. (From Fahnestock, Jeanne and Marie Secor. “Classical Rhetoric: The Art of Argumentation.” Argument Revisited; Argument Redefined: Negotiating Meaning in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Barbara Emmel, Paula Resch, and Deborah Tenney. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 1996. 97-123.)

See Hunter Library’s “Research Toolkit” for more: http://library.hunter.cuny.edu/research-toolkit/faculty-guide/stases-research-method

The Six Stases

Existence: Does a problem exist?

Definition: How do we characterize the problem?

Cause: What caused the problem?

Value: Is it good or bad? Moral/immoral? Effective/ineffective?

Action: What should we do about the problem?

Jurisdiction: Who should decide what we do about the problem?

Exercise: Applying the Stases

Draft a question for your topic that corresponds to each one of the six stases.

Identify an information resource that addresses each of your questions.

Submit your work.

Assessing and Analyzing Research Questions

FINER: a strategy for assessing the value of a research question

PICOT: a strategy for analyzing the content of a research question in order to develop search strategies

FINER

Feasibility: number of participants, technical expertise, cost, scope

Interest: Motivation!

Novelty: confirms, refutes, or extends previous findings

Ethicality: must not pose unacceptable physical risk or invasion of privacy

Relevance: connects to clinical practice or health policy, advances knowledge, drives future research

PICOT

Population

Intervention

Comparison

Outcome

Temporality

Exercise: Applying PICOT and FINER

Apply PICOT and FINER to example research objectives

Submit your work

Bibliography: PICOT and FINER

Hulley SB, Cummings SR, Browner WS, Grady DG, Newman TB. Conceiving the research question. Designing Clinical Research 2nd ed Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. 2001:335.

Richardson WS, Wilson MC, Nishikawa J, Hayward RS. The well-built clinical question: a key to evidence-based decisions. ACP J Club. 1995;123(3):A12-A13.

Rios LP, Ye C, Thabane L. Association between framing of the research question using the PICOT format and reporting quality of randomized controlled trials. BMC Medical Research Methodology. 2010;10(1):11. doi:10.1186/1471-2288-10-11.

Schardt C, Adams MB, Owens T, Keitz S, Fontelo P. Utilization of the PICO framework to improve searching PubMed for clinical questions. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making. 2007;7(1):16. doi:10.1186/1472-6947-7-16.

Bibliography: Example Research Questions

Factor-Litvak P, Insel B, Calafat AM, et al. Persistent Associations between Maternal Prenatal Exposure to Phthalates on Child IQ at Age 7 Years. PLoS ONE. 2014;9(12):e114003. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0114003.

Fathabadi N, Vasheghani Farahani M, Moradi M, Hadadi B. Estimates of the occupational exposure to tenorm in the phosphoric acid production plant in Iran. Radiat Prot Dosimetry. 2012;151(3):600-603. doi:10.1093/rpd/ncs021.

Fisk WJ, Lei-Gomez Q, Mendell MJ. Meta-analyses of the associations of respiratory health effects with dampness and mold in homes. Indoor Air. 2007;17(4):284-296. doi:10.1111/j.1600-0668.2007.00475.x.

Marchand A, Aranda-Rodriguez R, Tardif R, Nong A, Haddad S. Human Inhalation Exposures to Toluene, Ethylbenzene and M-Xylene and Physiologically based Pharmacokinetic Modeling of Exposure Biomarkers in Exhaled Air, Blood and Urine. Toxicol Sci. 2015:kfv009. doi:10.1093/toxsci/kfv009.