"

Module 1.6 What study design should you use?

image of a stethescope beside a person typing on a laptop keyboard
Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

To recap, the different types of questions that can arise during patient encounters can include:

  • diagnosis
  • therapy
  • prognosis
  • aetiology / harm
  • prevention and / or
  • clinical findings

Different types of questions may be best answered by specific study designs. Understanding what study design is ideal to answer your question, will help you limit your search, and make the process of answering your question more efficient.

Consider the Doctor in the activity below, who has some information to share on the best study design/s to use, to answer specific clinical questions. Work through the information icons to discover what study design would suit a specific question.

 

 

Types of single studies

Different types of single studies may be best used to answer different questions, and may provide different Levels of Evidence. Each study design has strengths and weaknesses that may affect the validity of the results. Click on each study design to find out more.

 

 

Types of analysis, reviews and guidelines

In the literature, you will also find studies that combine and appraise collections of studies on a particular topic or question in different ways.  Click on each type to find out more.

 

Licence

Icon for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Answering Clinical Questions Copyright © 2025 by The University of Western Australia is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Share This Book