You will submit Critical Review of ONE article through Turnitin submission point.
You will submit Critical Review of ONE article through Turnitin submission point.
Word Limit & Formatting requirements:
Your review should not exceed 1200 words (less than 850 words may indicate you have not captured all the points adequately).
Font type: Times New Roman, Font size 11, Spacing 1.5, Page margins: Normal
Writing Guidelines:
Please choose only ONE article.
To write your review you should use 13 questions listed under 'Critical Appraisal of Experimental/Intervention studies' provided below. You may not have enough space to write every question, so you can use numbering (1-13) to write your evaluation of each.
Please also refer to the ilecture on Critical Appraisal which will provide you broader overview. If your chosen paper/study is not intervention design, there are Critical Appraisal points provided in other ilectures on every study design. You should view the ilecture for the study design your selected article is based on and use those points as a guide for your review.
Please avoid a common error of making broad and vague statements about a bias. You have learned many different types of bias in this unit so we expect you to be specific with names/labels and link it to how this will affect a certain aspect and/or findings of your chosen study. Marks will not be awarded for providing names without explaining the implications. Of course, every shortcoming you identify is not any bias, but we expect that you will link it to how this affect the study and the results.
Please do not provide a summary of the article or the results.
Please do not repeat the information already provided in the paper (unless you are only referring to it to make/support the point you are making).
Critical Appraisal of Experimental/Intervention studies
Was true randomisation used for assignment of participants to treatment groups?
Were treatment groups similar at baseline?
Was allocation to treatment groups concealed?
Were participants blind to treatment assignment?
Were those delivering treatment blind to treatment assignment?
Were outcome assessors blind to treatment assignment?
Were treatment groups treated identically other than the intervention of interest?
Was follow up complete and if not, were differences between groups in terms of their follow up adequately described and analysed?
Were participants analysed in the groups to which they were randomised? (intention to treat analyses).
Were outcomes measured in the same way for treatment groups?
Were outcomes measured in a reliable way?
Was appropriate statistical analysis used?
Was the trial design appropriate, and any deviations from the standard RCT design accounted for in the conduct and analysis of the trial?
