To Örebro University

Background: Teaching students to critically appraise scientific literature is an important goal for a postgraduate research methods course.

Objective: To investigate the application of checklists for assessing the scientific rigor of empirical studies support students in reviewing case study research and experiments.

Methods: We employed an experimental design where 76 students (in pairs) used two checklists to evaluate two papers (reporting a case study and an experiment) each. We compared the students' assessments against ratings from more senior researchers. We also collected data on students' perception of using the checklists.

Results: The consistency of students' ratings and the accuracy when compared to ratings from seniors varied. A factor seemed to be that the clearer the reporting, the easier it is for students to judge the quality of studies. Students perceived checklist items related to data analysis as difficult to assess.

Conclusion: As expected, this study reinforces the needs for clear reporting, as it is important that authors write to enable synthesis and quality assessment. With clearer reporting, the novices performed well in assessing the quality of the empirical work, which supports its continued use in the course as means for introducing scientific reviews.