PICO is the framework most used by health researchers when formulating their clinical questions.
| Population or Problem |
- How is your population defined? (e.g. age, gender, ethnic group …)
- Which of their problems, diseases or conditions are you looking at
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| Intervention |
- How is the problem being treated?
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| Comparison |
- Which alternative method are you comparing this with? (It’s ok to leave this one blank if you are not doing a comparison)
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| Outcome |
- Which result are you focusing on or measuring?
- What are you hoping to improve?
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Other variables that can be added to this PICO framework are:
| Timeframe |
- What is the duration of the intervention?
- What is the follow up schedule?
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| Type of question |
- Is this a question about diagnosis, treatment, prevention, prognosis, or aetiology?
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Type of study
or
Study design |
- Which study type(s) will you be searching for?
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| Setting |
- Where is your intervention of interest taking place?
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| Context |
- Where is this happening? (e.g. geographical location or service location)
- What is the social or cultural context for your population?
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Variant frameworks:
- PICOC = Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Context
- PICOS = Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Study type
- PICOT = Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Time
- PICOTS = Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Timing, Setting
- PICOTT = Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Type of question, Type of study
- PIO = Population, Intervention, Outcome
The PICo variation is useful for qualitative studies.
| Population or Problem |
- How is your population defined? (e.g. age, gender, ethnic group …)
- Which of their problems, diseases or conditions are you looking at
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| Interest |
- Which experience, activity, process or event are you interesting in focusing on?
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| Context |
- Where is this happening? (Geographical location, e.g. Australia / Service location, e.g. hospital)
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This variation of PICO is used for evaluating diagnostic tests.
| Patient or Participants or Population |
- How is your population defined? (e.g. age, gender, ethnic group …)
- Which of their problems, diseases or conditions are you looking at
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| Index tests |
- Which test are you evaluating?
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| Comparator or reference tests |
- Which alternative are you comparing this with? (It’s ok to leave this one blank if you are not doing a comparison)
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| Outcome |
- Which result are you focusing on or measuring?
- What are you hoping to improve?
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