PICO-skjema
The PICO framework is a model used for structuring questions, often within health-related subjects, because each key element required for a focused question is captured. The letters P.I.C.O. stand for certain elements that are often included in health-related research questions:
P: (problem or patient)
I: (intervention)
C: (comparison)
O: (outcome)
PICO clarifies who or what your research question is about, what interventions are being scrutinized and what outcome you are interested in.
Application of PICO
Is exercise or diet most efficient for treating overweight?
In this example, we are interested in the effect of the intervention «exercise» (I) compared to «diet» (C). That means we want to find studies that compare these two interventions. What we want to measure is the weight loss (O) among people who are overweight (P).
It is not always appropriate to fill in all four elements in the PICO framework. Sometimes there is no clear I (intervention), C (comparison) may be missing, or no clear O (outcome) is expressed in the research question.
Example: PICO framework with suggested synonyms
Below you see a completed PICO framework with suggested synonyms for the question «is exercise or diet most efficient for treating overweight?»
- Overweight
- Obesity
- High BMI
- Excess weight
- Exercise
- Gymnastics
- Physical activity
- Diet
- Nutrition habits
- Nutrition behavior
- Eating habits
- Food habits
- Eating behavior
- Weight loss
- Weight reduction
- BMI reduction
- BMI loss
Note that the synonyms within each column are combined with OR, and the columns are combined with AND.
Example: Systematic search presented via search history
Below you see an example of systematic search with explanation presented via the search history in Ovid Medline. The search process becomes flexible and evident when searching for one search term at the time, and then combine them in the search history using AND or OR:
| # | Search | Results |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | exp Overweight/ | 242260 |
| 2 | Overweight.mp. | 82734 |
| 3 | exp Obesity/ | 235058 |
| 4 | obesity.mp. | 360477 |
| 5 | "High BMI".mp. | 4118 |
| 6 | "Excess Weight".mp. | 5883 |
| 7 | 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 | 388184 |
| 8 | exp Exercise/ | 221169 |
| 9 | Exercise.mp | 386937 |
| 10 | Gymnastic*.mp. | 3790 |
| 11 | "Physical activit*".mp. | 127039 |
| 12 | 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 | 508008 |
| 13 | exp Diet/ | 305094 |
| 14 | Diet.mp. | 506370 |
| 15 | "Nutrition habit*".mp. | 252 |
| 16 | "Nutrition behavi*".mp. | 204 |
| 17 | "Eating habit*".mp. | 6428 |
| 18 | "Food habit*".mp. | 2449 |
| 19 | "Eating behavi*".mp. | 5835 |
| 20 | 13 or 14 or 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 | 567773 |
| 21 | Weight Loss/ | 39801 |
| 22 | "Weight loss".mp. | 108601 |
| 23 | (Weight adj2 reduc*).mp. | 30373 |
| 24 | (BMI adj2 reduc*).mp. | 2466 |
| 25 | (BMI adj2 loss).mp. | 897 |
| 26 | 21 or 22 or 23 or 24 or 25 | 129477 |
| 27 | 7 and 12 and 20 and 26 | 6859 |
Explanation:
mp = searching for textwords in the following fields of the reference: title, abstract, original title, name of substance word, subject heading word, floating sub-heading word, keyword heading word, organism supplementary concept word, protocol supplementary concept word, rare disease supplementary concept word, unique identifier, synonyms
/ = the search term is fetched from the MeSH thesaurus.
adj2 = finds terms in any order with 1 word (or none) between them. ADJ1 finds the two terms in any order, with no words between them.
exp = shows that narrower terms in the thesaurus are included.
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