The primary purpose of this section of the website is to provide a source of information for consumers of research as well as for clinical researchers. A secondary purpose is to provide a forum for clinicians, academicians, and students to share ideas and to develop collaborative research projects. Please let us know if you have an interesting link you would like to share.
Validating clinical practice by documenting outcomes and the efficacy of physical therapy are vital to our future as a profession. Clinicians and academicians can combine efforts to answer questions of interest to our profession and the scientific community. If you are interested in clinical research, or have an idea for a clinical research project contact any of the educational institutions in your area. Many PT programs require a research project and you may be able to find students and faculty that are interested in assisting you. If further assistance is needed in finding collaborators for clinical research please contact the Research Committee Chair.
Hooked on Evidence www.hookedonevidence.com
Hooked on Evidence is provided as a member benefit to APTA members. It is a database containing extractions of current literature on the effectiveness of physical therapy. It incorporates tools that assist the reader in appraising the quality of the literature and provides a synopsis of the results of the study. Only randomized controlled trials are included.
Physiotherapy Choices www.physiotherapychoices.org.au
Physiotherapy Choices provides a catalog of the best research evidence on the effectiveness of physical therapy interventions for consumers – patients, family, friends, health service managers and insurers.
Pubmed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi
Pubmed: provided by the National Library of Medicine. It contains all Medline citations back to the mid 1960's. This database is free, contains a powerful search engine, and provides simple steps to allow you to narrow or broaden your search as needed. In general, if a full-text version of an article is available, the link to the full text (or publisher from which full-text can be purchased) will be provided.
Pedro: www.pedro.org.au
An initiative of the Center for Evidence-based Physiotherapy, University of Sydney, Australia. This database contains a quality assessment of over 3000 systematic reviews and randomized controlled trials of research particularly applicable to physical therapy.
Translating Research into Practice (TRIP) www.tripdatabase.com
This is a clinical search tool that allows health professional to search for and identify quality evidence for clinical practice. It searches Cochrane, Pubmed, etc and indicates the quality of the evidence found.
Websites on Statistics
Power analysis http://statpages.org/
From Statsoft, Inc: Provides a detailed description of power analysis and it's use in research.