Formulating a Clinical Research Question: Concept Worksheet & Map

For researchers who prefer making lists to organize their thoughts and the grouping of information or topics, a Concept Worksheet similar to the guide and template below may be useful. 

With the Concept Worksheet, you can easily map out a strategy for each database you will search and even when using AI research assistance within some of the research tools TCU Library offers, this Concept Worksheet is a great way to double check even that more automated searches are being performed correctly and including all relevant terms. The skills you will learn in developing and refining your question as well as performing some of the searching manually are going to always be vital to incorporating other support methods, such as use of Language Models (LMs), successfully and responsibly.

For researchers who prefer to visualize their project, a Concept Map can be a valuable tool.

At some point in your process, thinking more about alternative search terms that could describe the relationships of the different concepts you have identified will also be helpful. Below is an example of a beginning draft of a concept map related to the clinical research question you will see on the PICO(T) tab. It is intentionally incomplete and imperfect in order to help guide your understanding of how to organize concepts and how you could add to and refine the map if it was your research question, so think through this as you review the map.

Use the magnifying tool to enlarge/interact with the map.