Methods of Evaluating Evidence in Evidence-Based Practice Nursing

In evidence-based nursing practice, many approaches can be employed in evaluating evidence. The two main approaches are systematic review and meta-analysis. Evaluating evidence is essential in nursing. Evidence evaluation is complex, and hence, researchers must understand the effective techniques to ensure they get the best results. Using appropriate evaluation methods leads to researchers getting the best results.

Systematic review utilizes analytical strategies to collect and analyze secondary sources of information. In a systematic review, there is a formulation of research questions with a broad or narrow scope, followed by identifying and synthesizing data related to the research question (Misra & Agarwal, 2018). Systematic reviews aim to critically evaluate existing research studies and synthesize the results using qualitative or quantitative methods. They summarize existing evidence into a research question. An example is a systematic review of case studies to be used in evidence-based nursing practice.

A meta-analysis uses statistical methods to summarize the results of different scientific studies (Tawfik et al., 2019). Meta-analysis is normally performed in a scenario when many scientific studies are addressing the same research question. The individual studies should report measures that have some degree of error (Schmid et al., 2020). Meta-analysis aims to create a conclusion that has a greater statistical advantage than all the other individual studies (Schmid et al., 2020). The conclusion is considered statistically more substantial since there are more study subjects, greater diversity, and accumulated results. Meta-analysis is considered a subset of systematic review since it analyzes already existing evidence. The difference between the two methods is that systematic review analyzes different research studies to answer a specific question, while meta-analysis statistically analyzes combined outcomes from different studies to make a more statistically significant conclusion.

References

Misra, D. P., & Agarwal, V. (2018). Systematic reviews: Challenges for their justification, related comprehensive searches, and implications. Journal of Korean Medical Science, 33(12). https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2018.33.e92

Schmid, C. H., White, I. R., & Stijnen, T. (2020). Introduction to systematic review and meta-analysis. Handbook of Meta-Analysis, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315119403-1

Tawfik, G. M., Dila, K. A., Mohamed, M. Y., Tam, D. N., Kien, N. D., Ahmed, A. M., & Huy, N. T. (2019). A step-by-step guide for conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis with simulation data. Tropical Medicine and Health, 47(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41182-019-0165-6

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