Objectives: Booth indicates that question formulation drives the entire Evidence-Based Practice process. A 2010 systematic review by Horsley et al. determined a lack of conclusive empirical evidence for any method of training in question formulation. This study sought to measure the degree of improvement in student performance in question formulation skills through training and the use of a new rubric.
Methods: Quasi-Experiment. Students beginning the course were presented with a clinical vignette and asked to formulate a question based on that vignette. Two weeks later they were trained in question formulation skills in a one-hour session coupled with a one-hour searching skills lab. Students then were post-tested on the same clinical vignette and asked to formulate a question. Students were assessed by three faculty instructors using the rubric that had been incorporated into the training. This rubric measured student performance on question formulation for both the pre- and post-test.
Results: We will report our results during February 2020. We anticipate that students will improve their question formulation skills as measured using the same rubric by at least 20%. We expect to use a two-tailed t-test statistical analysis to compare the pre- and post-test scores on the same rubric.
Conclusions: Health sciences librarians frequently train students and practitioners on formulating answerable Evidence Based Practice questions. This study seeks to advance progress in training others on question formulation. Five years ago, we sought to improve on existing training protocols for question formulation through a multiple year trial and error development process primarily based on anonymous student evaluations. Our training of first-year medical students included the use of a rubric for student self-assessment. Previous anonymous student evaluations had rated the question formulation training highly. This study sought to measure the degree of improvement of student performance in question formulation skills.
