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Critical appraisal

Tod, David; Booth, Andrew; Smith, Brett

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Authors

David Tod

Andrew Booth



Abstract

The purpose of the current article is to define critical appraisal, identify its benefits, discuss conceptual issues influencing the adequacy of a critical appraisal, and detail procedures to help reviewers undertake critical appraisals. A critical appraisal involves a careful and systematic assessment of a study’s trustworthiness or methodological rigour, and contributes to assessing how confident people can be in the findings of a set of studies. To help reviewers include high quality critical appraisals in their articles, they can consider differences between quality and bias, the value of total quality scores, the advantages and disadvantages of standardized checklists, the relevance of the experimental hierarchy of evidence, the differences between critical appraisal tools and reporting standards, and the challenges involved in appraising qualitative research. The steps involved in a sound critical appraisal include: (a) identifying the study type(s) of the individual paper(s), (b) identifying appropriate criteria and checklist(s), (c) selecting an appropriate set of criteria and checklist, (d) performing the appraisal, and (e) summarizing and using the results. Although these steps apply to critical appraisals of both quantitative and qualitative research, they require reviewers to make and defend a number of decisions resulting from the subjective features involved in assessing research.

Citation

Tod, D., Booth, A., & Smith, B. (2022). Critical appraisal. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 15(1), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984x.2021.1952471

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 30, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 12, 2021
Publication Date 2022
Deposit Date Jul 30, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology
Print ISSN 1750-984X
Electronic ISSN 1750-9858
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 15
Issue 1
Pages 52-72
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/1750984x.2021.1952471

Files

Published Journal Article (2.2 Mb)
PDF

Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.





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