Critical Appraisal is the process of carefully and systematically examining research to judge its trustworthiness, and its value and relevance in a particular context.

The following links will help you in critically appraising evidence:

• What is Critical Appraisal? A short and clear guide commissioned by AVENTIS and produced by Hayward Medical plc.
  
  
• ScHARR (School of Health and Related Research) includes links to numerous critical appraisal tools, guides and resources.
  
  
• Centre for Evidence Based Medicine Resources for appraising information including a range of guides and tools for download. CATmaker is a software tool produced by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine that helps you to create Critically Appraised Topics (CATs), for the key articles you find on therapy, diagnosis, prognosis, aetiology/harm and systematic reviews of therapy.
  
  
• Critical Appraisal of Health Care Literature Brief introductory guide from Cardiff University for critically appraising published literature and web sites with links to resources and definitions of key terms.
  
  
• The Critical Appraisal Skills Programme (CASP) is part of the NHS Public Health Resource Unit and has helped to develop an evidence-based approach in health and social care, working with local, national and international groups. CASP aims to enable individuals to develop the skills to find and make sense of research evidence, helping them to put knowledge into practice. A number of tools have been developed to help with critically appraising articles of different types of research, such as randomised controlled trials, systematic reviews and qualitative research. These are available and free to download for personal use