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The first step in your research is always going to be identifying your research question. Depending on your information need, this question can often take the form of either a background question or a foreground question.
If you are interested in more general knowledge about a particular disease, process, treatment, etc., then you very likely have a background research question. This is usually no more than one or two sentences, and can often be pretty broad.
Frequently, background questions can be answered using Point-of-Care tools (e.g., UpToDate, VisualDX) and/or textbooks.
Foreground questions are more specific, and frequently inform clinical decisions. Questions like this are typically not easily answered. They often require searching for relevant evidence in literature databases like PubMed and CINAHL Plus.
One of the common frameworks for identifying your foreground research question in health sciences is the PICO framework, also sometimes encountered as PICOt or even PICO(t). A good foreground research question will address the following components:
| Initial | What it stands for | What it encompasses |
|---|---|---|
| P | Patient, Population, or Problem | Who you are researching; incl. any disease or disorder |
| I | Intervention | Primary intervention or treatment you are interested in |
| C | Comparison or Control | Comparison or alternative treatment |
| O | Outcome | Expected outcome or result |
| t | Time | Time to follow-up, time of exposure to intervention, or similar (the time component is often optional) |
Examples