You have found a study on a topic that interests you, and its result looks promising. Before including it in a professional development meeting, one question remains: how closely does it address the work you actually want to discuss? Research can concern the right subject without answering your particular question. An activity involving students and an immediate written exercise, for instance, does not amount to studying how practising professionals learn over time.
For psychologists and psychotherapists reading research, this calls for an explicit comparison. Here we suggest a way to record that comparison when preparing a discussion with colleagues. It is a reading exercise, using an entirely fictional example. It does not select treatments for real people or give a study a certificate of applicability.
Put two precise questions together
Write down what you want to understand in your setting, alongside what the study actually examined. Keep the sentences separate even when they use similar words. “Prepare a meeting for professionals about critical reading” is still a broad aim. “Understand whether an activity helps participants recognise a study design” describes a narrower task. “Choose together which articles to discuss” describes another one.
Chapter 15 of the Cochrane Handbook addresses applicability partly through the match between the question and available research, considering population, intervention, comparison and outcomes. It is guidance for reviews of healthcare interventions. The educational example below is our editorial suggestion; Cochrane has not validated it.
Start by recording the authors’ stated question and where you found it. If your own wording already contains a result, such as “show that this method also works here”, rewrite it as an open question. The purpose of the comparison is to identify which answer is available and which further step still needs support.
Follow a fictional example
Imagine a fictional research report. University psychology students complete guided exercises to recognise different study designs in short written descriptions. The comparison involves individual exercises using the same materials, and a final test takes place immediately afterwards. We assign no results or numbers to this imaginary report. Our focus is the relationship between what is studied and how a reader hopes to use it.
Now imagine a group of psychologists and psychotherapists arranging a regular reading discussion, or journal club. Participants read a full article at home and meet a week later to decide which questions deserve further attention. The person preparing the meeting finds our fictional report and considers using it to support the group’s organisation.
Both settings involve reading research, but the described tasks differ. This allows an initial note: the report concerns an exercise with short descriptions, while the group wants to discuss complete articles. We do not yet have grounds to say that the activity is effective or ineffective in the second setting.
Describe the differences that matter
Begin with the people and the task. In our example, “psychology” connects the participants, but the label does not establish their experience of reading research. For the professional group, you might want to know about familiarity with methods, meeting aims and available time. These are details to find or clarify. They do not justify assuming that every practitioner is more skilled at every task.
Then examine what actually happened. “Guided exercises” needs detail: written instructions, discussion with a teacher and individual feedback describe different activities. Who would provide those functions at your meeting? If you change materials, support or duration, record the change. Keeping an activity’s name does not establish that its conditions are equivalent.
The AHRQ methods guidance on applicability suggests organising the comparison by setting as well as other domains, and making relevant differences explicit. It also cautions against a universal rating system. Its subject is medical interventions; it does not turn this reading note into a validated clinical assessment.
Check what is being measured
In the fictional report, the test concerns recognising study designs immediately after an exercise. In the professional group, your aim is to prepare a discussion a week later. To argue that the report addresses this need, you would have to explain the connection between those activities and time points. Simply writing “improves critical reading” would skip the very step you are trying to examine.
The comparison also deserves its own sentence. If the authors compare two ways of practising a task, they are not necessarily comparing a regular meeting with no meetings. Keep the reference condition in your note. This prevents “compared with what?” from disappearing when you present the article to colleagues.
If a detail is missing from the text you consulted, write “not reported in the available section”. Do not automatically turn it into an absent feature or fill it in through intuition. A supplement might describe it. Until you check, it remains a gap in the available documentation. Record which information would change your reading and where you would look for it.
Explain the reason for caution
A useful note connects each difference to the statement you want to make. For example: “The report describes an immediate exercise; it does not document discussion of complete articles a week later. I will present it as an idea for developing questions, without attributing a result for our group to it.” The final sentence is a communication choice, not an experimental conclusion.
Avoid both a list of similarities that automatically endorses the study and a list of differences that automatically rules it out. Ask which details matter to the intended use. A different venue alone does not explain why a procedure would produce a different outcome. If you suspect a difference is decisive, show your reasoning and seek the necessary support before turning it into a claim.
This note does not complete an appraisal of the research. By itself, it does not examine risk of bias, uncertainty in the results or the rest of the available evidence. Further reading may be needed before communicating a general recommendation. Keeping a specific question open is a useful outcome, especially when the alternative would be a conclusion broader than the material you have read.
Bring a checkable statement to colleagues
Before the meeting, prepare a short paragraph stating the group’s question, the study’s question, the main difference and the limit of the statement you will use. Add a reference to the section consulted and identify missing information. A colleague can then discuss the connection rather than guess why you selected the report. If new information appears, update the note and keep the reason for the change.
You can begin with one article and a bounded educational aim, without patient data. If you want an AI workspace to help you work on the wording of your note, you can try PsyLab for free. Keep the original text open: checking the information, comparing the settings and taking responsibility for the conclusion remain your tasks.