Who was in it
The sample, how it was recruited, and who was excluded. Exclusion criteria are the most informative and the least read part of most papers, because they tell you which patients or participants the finding does not cover.
A study excluding everybody with a comorbidity is not evidence about a population that mostly has one, however good the study is on its own terms.
What the design can establish
A randomised design can support a causal claim. A cohort study can establish association with some confidence about direction. A cross-sectional survey can establish association and nothing about sequence.
This single question resolves most citation mismatches. If the design cannot establish causation, your sentence should not assert it, whatever the discussion section of the paper implies.
What was actually measured
Outcome measures are where a plausible-sounding finding often falls apart. A study reporting improved outcomes may have measured a proxy, a self-report, or a composite that includes things you do not care about.
Check whether the outcome measured is the outcome your claim is about, because those diverge more often than the abstract suggests.
How long it ran
Duration decides what can be said about durability. A six-week trial can tell you something happened; it cannot tell you it persisted. Where your claim is about sustained change, the follow-up period is the number that matters.
This is also the most common gap in quality improvement literature, where interventions are frequently reported over periods too short to show whether anything survived the enthusiasm of the project itself.
What they did with missing data
Every study has some, and how it was handled affects the result. A paper that analyses only participants who completed is answering a narrower question than one that accounts for those who did not.
A method section that does not mention missing data at all is telling you something too, usually that it was not considered.
Attrition in a longer study is the same question in a different form. Where a trial lost a third of its participants before the final measurement, who left and why matters as much as what happened to those who stayed.
Then read the results against it
With the method in mind, the results section becomes readable in a different way. You know what the numbers can mean, which comparisons were planned, and which are the study finding something it went looking for versus something it noticed.
That order — method first, then results, then discussion last — is roughly the reverse of how most people read a paper, and it is the order that produces citations you can defend.
The habit this builds
Reading methods properly changes what you notice in your own writing. Once you have spent time asking whether a design supports a claim, the same question arrives automatically when you write your own sentences.
That is most of what separates a literature review that appraises from one that summarises, and it is not a technique so much as a habit of attention that transfers from reading to writing.
It also makes reading faster rather than slower over time. Knowing which six things you are looking for turns an intimidating paper into a short list of questions, and most papers answer all six within the first two pages of the method.
Questions this raises.
How long should reading a method take?
About five minutes for the six checks above, on a paper you are considering citing. Papers that survive those checks and matter to your argument deserve a slower read. The point of the quick pass is to stop you spending an hour on a study that was never going to support your claim.
What if the method is not clearly described?
Treat that as information about the study. A method you cannot follow is a method you cannot evaluate, and a reader of your work is in the same position at one remove. Where a central claim rests on a paper whose method is opaque, it is worth finding a better-reported study making the same point.
Does this apply to qualitative research?
The questions change and the discipline does not. Ask who was included and how they were recruited, what approach was used and whether it fits the question, how data were analysed, and what the researchers say about their own position. Reporting standards for qualitative work are explicit about all of it.
Should I read the method before the abstract?
Read the abstract first to decide whether the paper is relevant, then go straight to the method rather than to the discussion. The discussion is the authors telling you what they think their results mean, which is useful and is not the same as what the results can support.
What if the study contradicts my argument?
Then it is one of the more valuable papers you have found. Engage with it explicitly, compare its method against the studies pointing the other way, and say why you weigh them as you do. A paper that never mentions the contrary evidence is read as either unaware of it or avoiding it.
Warren Cobbett
PhD, Biostatistics, on the statistics and analysis side of the hall. Writes for The Footnote and coaches the students who bring this work to the desk. The rest of the specialists.
Elsewhere in the hall.
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