In today's rapidly changing world of clinical practice, old assumptions quickly fall under the weight of new evidence. But to make effective clinical decisions, you must face a deluge of data published in the health research literature. With this best-selling text as your guide, you'll discover a concise, stepwise program that will help you evaluate clinical studies, identify flaws in study design, interpret statistics, and apply evidence from clinical research to your practice. Sharpen your analytical skills with these insightful features: step-by-step approach that is ideal for both students and practitioners guides you through the health research literature, showing you the ingredients that go into a meaningful study, clues to potential study flaws, and ways to apply solid evidence in clinical practice; uniform framework that uses a simple six-point framework based on the mnemonic M.A.A.R.I.E (You will learn to evaluate studies in terms of Methods, Assignment, Assessment, Results, Interpretation, and Extrapolation; and, Hypothetical illustrations that demonstrate the limitations of today's published studies. The book also features unique learning aids - including question checklists, scenarios illustrating study design, and flaw-catching exercises that help you reinforce key facts and retain what you've learned. New to the Fifth Edition: This book includes a new 'Guide to the Guidelines' section that helps you make sense of established and emerging clinical guidelines, and helps you understand the role of these guidelines in practice. Current information on outcomes includes discussions of safety and of the effects of interactions on outcomes. More graphic presentation of statistics helps make complex concepts easy to grasp and apply using a flowchart of statistics. StudyingaStudy.com Website is an integral feature of this edition providing interactive materials for all sections of the book. The Website provides practice using the M.A.A.R.I.E. framework, interactive flaw-catching and Selecting a Statistics exercises, self-testing questions-answers and exercises using abstracts from real articles. Courses and Journal Clubs can now use Studying a Study and Testing a Test with the help of a special section of the Website.