Depending on your subject area, you may find the PICO (Participants, Interventions, Comparisons and Outcomes) model helpful in formulating your question.
- Participants, Patient Population or Problem– who is the question about, for example gender, age, ethnicity, disease type, co-morbidity of the patient(s)?
- Intervention, Indicator or Exposure – which test, treatment, drug, procedure are you interested in?
- Comparisons, comparator, control or context – is there an alternative intervention you want to make a comparison with? What is the context?
- Outcomes – what you hope to achieve, or avoid? You may not need to answer all of these areas and you may also want to include the setting and the study design.