Assignment: Critically Appraising Quantitative Studies

Assignment: Critically Appraising Quantitative Studies
Assignment: Critically Appraising Quantitative Studies
What factors must be assessed when critically appraising quantitative studies?
Which is the most important? Why?
The percentage of suicide attempters with risk factors, pro- tective factors, and diagnosis of mental illness are presented in Table 1. In addition to risk and protective factors, features of the attempt, such as prior planning (11.0% Yes, 89.0% No), attempt to hide (30.3% Yes, 69.7% No), and place of suicide attempt (80.1% Home, 2.2% Workplace, 9.3% Public place, 2.8% Friend’s house, .6% Public building) were also included in the analysis.
Direct logistic regression was performed to assess the impact of available variables, namely, risk factors, protective factors, and features of the suicide attempt on the likelihood that suicide attempters were diagnosed with mental illness. Logistic regression was used in similar studies for a large number of predictors [25, 26] and is typically used to develop a subset of variables useful for predicting the criterion, by eliminating superfluous variables. Our sample size is sufficiently large and representative for statistical regression [47]. The full model (see Table 2) containing all available predictors was statistically significant, 2 (23, N = 462) = 83.40, p < .001, indicating that the model was able to distinguish between attempters with and without diagnosis of mental illness.Themodel as awhole explained between 16.5% (Cox and Snell 2) and 24.4% (Nagelkerke 2) of the variance inmental illness and correctly classified 79.0% of the cases. As shown in Table 3, only six of the independent variables made a unique statistically significant contribution to the model (unemployment, mental illness or suicide in family, alcohol or drug abuse, habitual poor coping, willing to seek help, and positive future planning). The strongest predictor of mental illness was mental illness or suicide in family, with an odds ratio of 2.75. This indicated that attempters who had mental illness or suicide in family were 2.75 times more likely to have a diagnosis of mental illness than those without mental illness, controlling for all other predictors in the model. The second strongest predictor was unemployment with an odds ratio of 2.43. This indicated that attempters who were unemployed were 2.43 times more likely to have diagnosis of mental illness. The third strongest predictor was willing to seek help, with an odds ratio of 2.28. This indicated that attempters who were willing to seek help were 2.28 times Anyone who wants to make informed decisions or improve the quality of healthcare delivery needs critical evaluation abilities. A good critical assessment will tell you whether or not a study is credible and beneficial. The assessment process, on the other hand, is frequently disregarded, and properly evaluating quantitative research can be intimidating for both researchers and doctors. This chapter explains what critical appraisal is and why it’s important in evidence-based practice. The reader is then exposed to the most popular quantitative study designs as well as crucial questions to ask while evaluating each one. Systematic reviews, experimental studies (randomized controlled trials and non-randomized controlled trials), and observational studies are all examples of these studies (cohort, case-control, and cross-sectional studies). This chapter also includes the most frequent strategies for assessing the methodological and reporting quality of quantitative research. This chapter serves as a step-by-step guide to evaluating quantitative research in healthcare settings. Practicing health educators frequently don’t have the time to read published studies in depth. Some health educators may become irritated when they try to understand research language, techniques, and approaches due to a lack of time to study scientific articles. The goal of scientific publication appraisal is to determine whether the study’s research questions (hypotheses), methods, and conclusions (findings) are legitimate enough to yield relevant information (Fowkes and Fulton, 1991; Donnelly, 2004; Greenhalgh and Taylor, 1997; Johnson and Onwuegbuze, 2004; Greenhalgh, 1997; Yin, 2003; and Hennekens and Buring, 1987). In a results-oriented environment where there are increasing demands and expectations for enhanced program outcomes and solid reasons for program emphasis and direction, the ability to deconstruct and reassemble scientific papers is a vital talent. Health educators must strengthen their confidence in their own ability to assess the quality of published scientific research rather than relying entirely on the judgments of researchers. If health educators who have little experience reading and evaluating scientific publications: 1) become more familiar with the key components of a research publication, and 2) use the questions presented in this article to critically appraise the strengths and weaknesses of published research, they may find this task easier.