Clinical Question and Study Design
In this chapter, we make the case for starting a curriculum in EBM with the process of asking a question, deciding what study design you are looking for, and understanding where any study sits within the overall hierarchy of evidence. We then dive into teaching the pros and cons of various study designs. We end with a description of how to teach the concepts of bias and random error. Bias (systematic error) and random error are critical concepts which serve as a foundation for multiple other concepts in EBM. While bias and random error are not always explicitly discussed in EBM curricula, we strongly urge the reader to incorporate this content early on and refer back to it often in other content areas, as we will demonstrate throughout this book.
