In the recent past, the number of studies was negligible, but about 30 years ago, the term "informational overload" came to science from the world of high technology. It means the inability to process all incoming information, leading to a decrease in performance. The pace of creating new knowledge exceeded the cognitive abilities of people to absorb and apply it. Such a situation provoked an urgent need to develop ways of managing information, involving an effective search for relevant data and its critical evaluation.

What is the purpose of a critical appraisal?

Allocating the very publications, the results of which are true and can be applied in practice, from a stream of other different publications is very important for the quality work of scientists. Given the fact that an analysis of full-text studies provides additional time costs, it is necessary to learn how to determine their reliability based on the minimum amount of information. Duly written critical appraisal examples help to cope with this task.

What should you pay attention to when evaluating a scientific article?

The very process of critical evaluation is based on the analysis of the legitimacy of the conclusions formulated by the authors of the published studies. It is very important to avoid misinterpretation and misuse of scientific data. Before applying the results of the research, the following questions should be answered:

Are the methods of study valid?
What are the results?
Do they have a concrete practical application?

Also, a good example of a critical appraisal should include a review of the following aspects: relevance, scientific novelty, theoretical, practical significance of the results obtained, and their reliability. Such an analysis helps to perform a complex diagnostics of the research, its intermediate and final results. The peculiarity of these parameters is their internal interrelation and even interdependence. For example, practical value is predetermined by theoretical significance. The same applies to the other parameters.

Relevance means the need and timeliness of studying the chosen problem, promotes the further development of the theory and practice of the area under study, characterizes the contradictions that arise between social needs (the demand for scientific ideas and practical recommendations) and the means of their satisfaction that science and practice can give now.

There are two kinds of novelty: theoretical (concept, hypothesis, regularity, terminology, etc.) and practical (rule, proposal, recommendation, requirement, methodological system, etc.) Depending on the type of work (fundamental, technological), its theoretical or practical novelty (or even both) will come to the fore in a particular critical appraisal of a research article example.

The practical significance of the results of the study indicates changes that have occurred or can be achieved as a result of the introduction of the obtained results into practice. This indicator depends on the number and composition of users interested in the research, scale of implementation (city, state), degree of readiness of the results for usage (initial, basic, final), expected socio-economic impact.

Reliability of the results of scientific research means the correspondence of the theoretical model to the real object. The model is considered complete if, in all possible conditions of its existence, it behaves the same way as the object under study, and their structures are identical.

In order to write a truly convincing analysis, you should acquire a solid writing and reading experience. Study at least one example of critical appraisal of qualitative research paper a day. Then, over time, you will understand all the features of this genre and become a respected critic. Good luck!