5 - Assess

Summary

Assess is a critical part of EBLIP and involves assessing the located evidence for its quality (often known as appraisal or critical appraisal) and quantity. There is also a need to weigh up or balance the results from different types of evidence, to get to know the evidence and what it is saying and then to put it into the context of the wider, overarching problem and the situation in which the decision is being made. While previous work within EBLIP has focused on appraising or assessing research evidence, this chapter will begin with research evidence but move on to examining how to assess other types of evidence and incorporating these into the decision-making process.

When assessing the evidence you may be asking yourself: of the evidence assembled, what pieces of evidence hold the most weight? Why? What evidence seems to be most trustworthy and valid? What evidence is most applicable to the current problem? What parts of this evidence can be applied to my context? This chapter considers how research evidence can be assessed using critical appraisal techniques, how critical appraisal techniques can be developed and used more routinely, the role of systematic reviews and a framework for weighing different types of evidence against each other. It aims to help you evaluate and weigh evidence sources and determine what the evidence says as a whole. Although assessing is a critical part of the EBLIP process, it is worth bearing in mind that there is little point in solely paying attention to this part of the process if the articulate and assemble aspects have not been thoughtfully executed in the first place.

Critical appraisal

Critical appraisal of research is an element of EBLIP that has received much attention in the literature and in practice. It is an important part of the process because it helps you to determine the worth of the research literature, but doing critical appraisal is not a skill that most librarians have been familiar or comfortable with. However, it is a skill that is relatively easy to teach and can be developed over time. Furthermore, some elements of the process are akin to other tasks that librarians are familiar with, such as critical thinking (a skill developed during master's-level study), or choosing the most appropriate results from a literature search, which requires decisions about applicability.