Evidence and data

A reader chooses here by the step from question to reported finding: how a study is designed, what it measures, how its data are recorded, how they are analysed, how the evidence is appraised, or how the numbers are presented. The science the evidence is about is in scientific background, the economic evidence a payer weighs in health economics and technology assessment, and the documents that carry the evidence in areas of practice. The obligations over sharing and disclosing data are in transparency and disclosure and ethics of the work.

• Study design — which design answers which kind of question, how an interventional trial is designed and analysed with the settings that force their own choices, and real-world evidence from routine care
• Measuring outcomes — measuring health outcomes, measurement quality, patient-reported outcome instruments and health-related quality of life, collecting them electronically, meaningful change, and what regulators expect of patient experience data
• Recording and managing data — data integrity and governance in a clinical trial, how an adverse event becomes trial data, coding clinical terms with MedDRA, and the FAIR data principles
• Statistics — describing a dataset, uncertainty and hypothesis tests, comparing groups and modelling outcomes, and how statistical reasoning entered medicine
• Appraising and interpreting evidence — critical appraisal of evidence, bias and confounding, balanced interpretation of findings, writing while the evidence is still moving, and evidence about preclinical research and about diet and lifestyle exposures
• Presenting numbers — units, notation and change, significant digits and reported precision, tables, and figures and graphs