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Drexel Library

Systematic Reviews

PICO(T)

PICO(T) is an acronym to help standardize clinical and diagnosis questions to ensure they are appropriately focused. Creating a good PICO(T) will help guide your literature search in the databases by creating keywords to search.

PICO(T) stands for:

Patient, Problem or Population What individual or group are we interested in studying?
Intervention What is the action (intervention, treatment) we are considering taking?
Comparison To what other action (intervention, treatment) are we comparing the considered action?
Outcome What do we anticipate as an outcome?
(Time) Is there a time frame?

Sample PICO(T)

  • Sometimes a PICO(T) question can be too narrow in scope to produce results, suggesting a gap in the literature. Consider modifying the research question to be able to conduct a proper literature review search.
  • Not all questions need each PICO(T) element.
  • The time frame element is optional.
  • Work to build out each PICO(T) element with Boolean operators into a full search in the Searching the Literature step.