NUR 513 Topic 6 DQ 1: CRAAP Test Guide
CRAAP has five letters and most posts apply three. Currency and authority are easy; relevance and purpose are where the marks are, because they depend on your project rather than on the article.
Editorial process
Last reviewed · August 16, 2026
CRAAP is five criteria, and the assignment wants all five applied
This post is a chain, and each link depends on the one before it. First decide what kind of research your Topic 5 idea would need. That is a real decision, not a formality: a question about whether an intervention reduces falls needs quantitative outcome data, while a question about why staff do not use a protocol needs qualitative work, and a question about both needs mixed methods. Say which and say why, because the article you select next has to match. Then choose the article, and choose one you can genuinely appraise — a full peer-reviewed study rather than an editorial, a summary page or a practice-alert. The commonest failure here is selecting something interesting and then discovering there is no methods section to evaluate. Name the research type of the article you picked and check it against the type you said you needed.
Then apply all five CRAAP criteria, and be honest that two of them are about you rather than about the article. Currency asks when it was published and whether that matters for this topic, which it does for treatment guidance and often does not for a validated instrument. Authority asks who wrote it and what they are qualified in. Accuracy asks whether the evidence supports the claims and whether the study was peer reviewed. Relevance and purpose are the two that carry the marks, because relevance means fit to your specific project question, and purpose means what the authors were trying to do and whether that motive shades the findings — a manufacturer-funded trial and an independent one can both be accurate and still differ in purpose. Finish by saying what the appraisal changed: keep the article, or reject it and say what you would look for instead.
Likely learning objectives
Inferred from the brief — check these against your own rubric.
- 01Match a research type to the shape of a practice question.
- 02Select a study that can be appraised rather than merely summarised.
- 03Apply all five CRAAP criteria, including the two that depend on the appraiser's purpose.
- 04State the decision the appraisal produced.
Read the full question
Review every instruction before using the planning guidance that follows.
Turn the brief into deliverables
- 01A restated EBP project idea from Topic 5.
- 02A named research type with a reason tied to the question's shape.
- 03A selected article with a full citation.
- 04Each of the five CRAAP criteria applied to that article.
- 05An explicit keep-or-reject decision with a justification.
Research type first, then the article, then the appraisal
The project idea and the question it asks
Restate the Topic 5 idea in a form that has a research question in it.
What research type this question needs
Choose quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods and justify it from the question.
The selected article
Present the article with its full citation and its own design.
The five CRAAP criteria applied
Work through currency, relevance, authority, accuracy and purpose against this article.
The decision and what it changes
State whether the article survives the appraisal and what you would search for next.
Choosing an article you can actually appraise
Recommended databases
- CINAHL
- PubMed
- Cochrane Library
- Your university library's CRAAP guide
Search sequence
- 1.Write the project question first; the design follows from it.
- 2.Filter for study types rather than browsing by topic.
- 3.Open the methods section before committing to an article.
- 4.Check the funding and conflict-of-interest statement — that is the evidence for the purpose criterion.
Reference shortlist
These are authoritative starting points, not a ready-made bibliography. A qualified reviewer must confirm that each source fits the assignment and supports the claim beside which it is cited.
Nothing here is cleared for citation until you have read it.
- 01
Levels of Evidence — Evidence-Based Practice Research in Nursing
Adelphi University Libraries · 2024
Levels of evidence, which is how to judge whether a chosen article carries the weight the question needs.
- 02
Using PubMed in Evidence-Based Practice
National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health · 2023
NLM guidance on using PubMed within the EBP process — the search step, done properly.
- 03
QSEN: Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes Associated With Evidence-Based Practice (Table 9.4)
Nursing Management and Professional Concepts, Chippewa Valley Technical College (NCBI Bookshelf) · 2022
The QSEN appraisal competencies — what a marker expects the five criteria to demonstrate.
- 04
Nursing Professional Development Evidence-Based Practice
StatPearls, NCBI Bookshelf · 2024
Situates appraisal inside the wider evidence-based practice process.
- 05
The Iowa Model Revised: Evidence-Based Practice to Promote Excellence in Health Care©
University of Iowa Health Care · 2017
The Iowa Model, which places appraisal inside a decision sequence rather than treating it as an isolated exercise.
Review before submission
Common mistakes
- Applying currency, authority and accuracy and treating relevance and purpose as obvious.
- Choosing an article with no methods section, leaving accuracy unevaluable.
- Naming a research type that does not match the question asked in Topic 5.
- Ending the appraisal with a verdict on the article but no decision about the project.
Submission checklist
- Did you state the research type before selecting the article?
- Does the article's design match the type you said you needed?
- Have you applied all five criteria by name?
- Is there a keep-or-reject decision at the end?
Use this guide to plan and review your own work. Follow your institution's rules and read our academic-integrity policy.
Written by
Aaron Bishop
MA, Education
assignment interpretation and research-methods coaching across disciplines
Aaron leads the EssayCrackers editorial desk. He works on how assignment briefs are read — what a rubric is actually asking for, and where students most often answer a different question than the one set.
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Dr. Nathan Cole
PhD, Rhetoric & Composition
Argumentation and thesis development
Nathan teaches first-year composition and directs a university writing center. He reviews EssayCrackers guides for argumentative soundness and citation accuracy.