Frequently Asked Questions

What does rigour mean when critically appraising research?

"Rigour refers to the strength of the research design in terms of ensuring that all procedures have been followed scrupulously, that all possible confounding factors have been eliminated and that the user can be confident that the conclusions are dependable...There are two key concepts... Validity [which] concerns he extent to which the research measures what it purports to measure without bias or distortion [and] reliability [which] refers to the consistency of measurement within a study." (Gerrish et al., 2015, p. 28).

For help to critically appraise a research article there is a useful chapter in Jackson et al., (2023) called "Reading and appraising research" and also the older edition of this by Borbasi et al. (2019) which include:

• questions to ask when appraising methodology
• identifying bias in quantitative research
• understanding statistical significance using confidence intervals (CI) 
• an example appraisal for a quantitative study
• an example appraisal for a qualitative study

Another book to help you appraise research is that by Greenhalgh et al. (2020) which includes such topics as:

• what was the research design and was it appropriate to the question?
• what was the research question and why was the study needed?
• meta-analyses and meta-syntheses
• the difference between qualitative and quantitative research
• evaluating papers that describe qualitative research
• quantitative research designs
• reliability and validity in measurement
• how bias threatens the validity of research evidence
• descriptive statistics for summarising sample characteristics
• confidence intervals
• summarising treatment effects from multiple studies of interventions in a systematic review (includes reading a forest plot).

You might also be interested in the following FAQ - In quantitative research how are risk ratios also known as relative risk calculated and what is the significance of confidence intervals?

Reference List 

Greenhalgh, T., Bidewell, J., Crisp, E., Lambros, A., & Warland, J. (2020). Understanding research methods for evidence-based practice in health (2nd ed.). John Wiley 

Lacey, A. (2015). Ensuring rigour. In K. Gerrish & J. Lathlean. The research process in nursing. (7th ed. p.28). John Wiley 

Jackson, D., Halcomb, E., & Walthall, H. (Eds.). (2023). Navigating the maze of research : enhancing nursing and midwifery practice (6th ed.). Elsevier.

Borbasi, S., Jackson, D., & East, L. (2019). Navigating the maze of research : enhancing nursing and midwifery practice (5th ed.). Elsevier.