Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68009
FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT RESEARCH ARTICLE COMPONENTS, SEE PAST ARTICLES FROM THE SOMATIC RESEARCH COLUMN IN THE DIGITAL EDITION AT WWW.MASSAGEANDBODYWORK.COM. The title of this article seems like it could be very relevant. We'll defi nitely take a look at this article. The second is "Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis: Benefi ts from Massage Therapy." Although we decided not to restrict our search by age, the title of this article makes clear that it is not likely to be as relevant to our client's situation as we might want. This study concerns a different form of arthritis (an autoimmune disease) rather than osteoarthritis, which is the wear and tear on the joints that sometimes happens to older adults. So, this second article is about a different disease process. While there may be some useful information in it, it is not likely to be as relevant to our client as the fi rst one. Let's get that fi rst article and practice our research literacy skills to evaluate whether it does a good job of answering our client's question. To get a copy of an article returned by a PubMed search on the screen of displayed results, click on the blue underlined title of the article you want. More information about the article,2 including the abstract, appears on the screen. The abstract gives us more indicators that this article will be useful for addressing our question. It tells us the article deals with our massage therapy intervention, our patients with osteoarthritis, and our reduced pain outcome. It also mentions that massage therapy is compared to delayed intervention; our comparison with pharmacological treatment is not exactly covered, and all our PICO criteria are not exactly matched. However, there are so few articles relevant to our clinical question that this is the closest we can come at the moment to answering our client's concern as he posed it. The abstract indicates massage is effective in reducing pain and other symptoms of osteoarthritis, and the results are statistically signifi cant, so this free article is defi nitely worth downloading. Note that it is never ethically acceptable just to read the abstract and claim to have read the research. Abstracts may contain errors and frequently leave out important nuances needed to fully understand the research. To access the full article, watch for a button on the same screen as the abstract. In this case, there is a blue, white, and yellow button labeled "Free Text at Archives of Internal Medicine" at the top right of the screen. This contains a link to the article at the publisher's website. Click on the button to link to the website, where a free copy of the article is available. There are slight variations on the websites that provide free articles, so the directions may vary. Look for buttons or links that read "Free Text at," "Free Final Text," or similar. The fi le itself will most likely be available as a PDF; some download automatically or, for others, look for a link to begin a manual download. ANSWERING QUESTIONS Read the article to see how well it addresses questions about whether massage is effective for pain relief in osteoarthritis. Mark it up as you read—making notes, drawing diagrams, using colored markers to connect ideas—whatever method helps you understand and retain the information. Below are the questions I'm bringing to this article. I've referenced the point in the research where such questions are usually addressed. • Why did the researchers do this study (from the Introduction)? What is their research question? Does their context mean anything to my practice? • How does their PICO compare to ours (from the Introduction)? What does that mean for applying their results in our practice? • How did the researchers study their research question (from the Methods)? visit massageandbodywork.com to access your digital magazine 121 • What did the researchers fi nd out (from the Results)? • What do the researchers say their results mean (from the Discussion)? What do you think of their interpretation? • In our scenario, would this article provide useful information for your client? If so, what? • What problems or gaps did Perlman's team fi nd with previous massage research studies (from the Introduction)? What limitations in their own study did they address (in the Discussion)? In your assessment, are any of these problems severe enough to invalidate their study? • Having read the article, do you think the Abstract is an accurate representation of it? • What else is notable? • How much did our exercise refl ect your real-life experience in fi nding research articles to inform your practice? I encourage you to think critically about each question. I'll print my answers in the next column, so that you can compare them with your own. practitioner and biomedical informatician in Seattle, Washington. She has practiced massage at the former Refugee Clinic at Harborview Medical Center and in private practice. In addition to teaching research methods in massage since 1996, she is the author of an upcoming book on research literacy in massage. Contact her at researching.massage@gmail.com. Ravensara S. Travillian is a massage NOTES 1. Available at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez ?Db=mesh&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToS earch=68008405&ordinalpos=1&itool=Entrez System2.PEntrez.Mesh.Mesh_ResultsPanel. Mesh_RVDocSum (accessed March 28, 2009). 2. Adam I. Perlman et al., "Massage Therapy for Osteoarthritis of the Knee: a Randomized Controlled Trial," Archives of Internal Medicine 166, no.22 (December 2006): 2,533–8.