Nutrition Science and Everyday Application - beta v 0.1

Types of Research Studies and How To
Interpret Them
The field of nutrition is dynamic, and our understanding and practices are always evolving.
Nutrition scientists are continuously conducting new research and publishing their findings
in peer-reviewed journals. This adds to scientific knowledge, but it’s also of great interest
to the public, so nutrition research often shows up in the news and other media sources.
You might be interested in nutrition research to inform your own eating habits, or if you
work in a health profession, so that you can give evidence-based advice to others. Making
sense of science requires that you understand the types of research studies used and their
limitations.
THE HIERARCHY OF NUTRITION EVIDENCE
Researchers use many different types of study designs depending on the question they are
trying to answer, as well as factors such as time, funding, and ethical considerations. The
study design affects how we interpret the results and the strength of the evidence as it
relates to real-life nutrition decisions. It can be helpful to think about the types of studies
within a pyramid representing a hierarchy of evidence, where the studies at the bottom of
the pyramid usually give us the weakest evidence with the least relevance to real-life
nutrition decisions, and the studies at the top offer the strongest evidence, with the
most relevance to real-life nutrition decisions.
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