Frameworks that can help you formulate a focused research question include PICO.
| Question Type | Description |
| Diagnosis | How to select and interpret diagnostic test in order to confirm or exclude a diagnosis, based on considering their specificity, sensitivity, likelihood ratios, expense, safety, etc. |
| Therapy | How to select treatment to offer patients that do more good than harm and that are worth the efforts and costs of using them. |
| Prognosis | How to estimate the patient's likely clinical course over time and anticipate likely complications of disease. |
| Etiology/Harm | How to identify causes for disease |
| Prevention | How to reduce the chance of disease by identifying and modifying risk factors and how to diagnose early be screening |
Determine what type of question you have. This will help you phrase your clinical question.
The PICO question format is useful for clinical and quantitative research topics (therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, etiology/harm, and prevention questions).
PICO questions identify 3-4 concepts: patient/population, intervention, comparison (optional), and outcome.
| PICO | Definition | Example |
|---|---|---|
| PATIENT/POPULATION/PROBLEM | Who is my question focused on? | Infants diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) |
| INTERVENTION | What is the proposed new intervention? | Early enteral re-feeding |
| COMPARISON (optional) | What is the current or alternative state? | Late enteral re-feeding |
| OUTCOME | What is the measurable outcome being impacted | NEC recurrence |
Example:
Research question: In infants diagnosed with necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), what is the effect of early enteral refeeding on NEC recurrence compared with late enteral refeeding?
