Purpose: Summarize and appraise an article for bias and validity in a collaborative environment.
Instructions: Carefully read, summarize, and appraise your group’s assigned article. The discussion board for this week should cover the following concepts in order to have a complete draft by the end of the week. Apply the concepts discussed in the lecture and the readings. As you provide input to your peers, be sure to state a rationale for your claims.
- Identify and discuss the following:
- what is known/not known about the topic and the gap in knowledge the study is intended to fill.
- the research design, purpose of the study, and setting.
- information about the sample:
- method;
- size;
- inclusion/exclusion criteria,
- attrition/loss to follow up/response rate, if any;
- important characteristics of the sample.
- Appraise and debate the sampling methods and determine the quality of the sampling procedures in reducing bias. Consider the following questions:
- Was the sampling method and inclusion/exclusion criteria adequate to reduce sampling bias?
- Are the sample characteristics representative of the target population?
- Was the sample size adequate?
- Was there a decrease in sample size? If so, did the researchers identify decreases early and attempt to reduce the impact? Was a decrease, if any, adequately explained by the researchers?
