Writing and critically appraising published research reports

Once we have conducted a good piece of research, what shall we do with our interesting and important findings? We need to put our information down on paper. We need to write about it so that our research findings can be disseminated and other people can read and make use of them, whether for improving current health and welfare practices or using them as the basis for developing new research projects. We also have an obligation to our participants to make sure their contributions to our work reach as wide a target audience as possible. It is also essential that we need to be able to critically appraise published materials arising out of research. This will help readers to be able to evaluate the evidence that they might need in their evidence-based practice. How do we know if the published material is rigorous and trustworthy enough?