Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017 Jun;18(4):705-712.
doi: 10.5811/westjem.2017.4.33906. Epub 2017 May 15.

Academic Primer Series: Five Key Papers about Study Designs in Medical Education

Michael Gottlieb  1 , Teresa M Chan  2 , Jenna Fredette  3 , Anne Messman  4 , Daniel W Robinson  5 , Robert Cooney  6 , Megan Boysen-Osborn  7 , Jonathan Sherbino  2
Affiliations
Review

Academic Primer Series: Five Key Papers about Study Designs in Medical Education

Michael Gottlieb et al. West J Emerg Med. 2017 Jun.

Abstract

Introduction: A proper understanding of study design is essential to creating successful studies. This is also important when reading or peer reviewing publications. In this article, we aimed to identify and summarize key papers that would be helpful for faculty members interested in learning more about study design in medical education research.

Methods: The online discussions of the 2016-2017 Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Faculty Incubator program included a robust and vigorous discussion about education study design, which highlighted a number of papers on that topic. We augmented this list of papers with further suggestions by expert mentors. Via this process, we created a list of 29 papers in total on the topic of medical education study design. After gathering these papers, our authorship group engaged in a modified Delphi approach to build consensus on the papers that were most valuable for the understanding of proper study design in medical education.

Results: We selected the top five most highly rated papers on the topic domain of study design as determined by our study group. We subsequently summarized these papers with respect to their relevance to junior faculty members and to faculty developers.

Conclusion: This article summarizes five key papers addressing study design in medical education with discussions and applications for junior faculty members and faculty developers. These papers provide a basis upon which junior faculty members might build for developing and analyzing studies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflicts of Interest: By the WestJEM article submission agreement, all authors are required to disclose all affiliations, funding sources and financial or management relationships that could be perceived as potential sources of bias. No author has professional or financial relationships with any companies that are relevant to this study. There are no conflicts of interest or sources of funding to declare.

References

    1. Bordage G, Dawson B. Experimental study design and grant writing in eight steps and 28 questions. Med Educ. 2003;37(4):376–85. - PubMed
    1. Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Emergency Medicine. [Accessed February 11, 2017]. Available at: http://www.acgme.org/Portals/0/PFAssets/ProgramRequirements/110_emergenc....
    1. Bourgeois JA, Hategan A, Azzam A. Competency-based medical education and scholarship: Creating an active academic culture during residency. Perspect Med Educ. 2015;4(5):254–8. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chan TM, Luckett-Gatopoulos S, Thoma B. Commentary on competency-based medical education and scholarship: creating an active academic culture during residency. Perspect Med Educ. 2015;4(5):214–7. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chan TM, Gottlieb M, Fant A, et al. Academic primer series: five key papers fostering educational scholarship in junior academic faculty members. West J Emerg Med. 2016;17(5):519–26. - PMC - PubMed