Critical Evaluation of a Research Study Sample

Critical Evaluation of a Research Study Sample Paper

Nursing research studies are geared towards informing evidence-based practice. Research studies form the basis of evidence-based practice, and improved health outcomes can be highly attributed to research study findings. Critical evaluation of a study aims at utilizing and also refuting research methods or findings in a study. Critical evaluation reviews the professionalism of a study, objectives, methods used, and their credibility. It also evaluates the credibility and reliability of results and applicability in future practice. This paper critically evaluates a study done to evaluate the health-related quality of life for older women after vertebral or hip fractures.

The study evaluated, that of Hallberg et al. (2019), is a qualitative study that examined the quality of life of women after vertebral or hip fractures. The authors utilized short semi-structured interviews with 10 Spanish women. The qualitative inductive content analysis method was used to analyze the data collected. The data collection approach ensures that data collected is first-hand and not categorized or influenced by theoretical perspectives (Nieswiadomy & Bailey, 2018). The advantage of the approach is that it allows the participants to express themselves, give perspectives about life freely, and explain their lives and experiences. The study employs purposive sampling to achieve the selection of a varied sample. Of the 3030, only 51 women who had completed a seven-year follow-up after vertebral hip fracture met the inclusion criteria.

The results revealed three prominent themes, namely, “A threatened independence, Strategies for maintaining independence, and the importance of maintaining independence,” (Hallberg et al., 2010). The themes all pointed towards ‘a strive to independence.’ However, the sample size was too small to generalize the findings to the initial number of participants, 303 patients. The findings can also not be generalized to all populations (Hallberg et al., 2010). However, they can only be used for inference and to inform further research using more extensive group studies to ensure the sample is more inclusive, making generalizations more reliable.

The study utilizes the IEEE referencing style. The in-text citations are arranged in a numerical sequence and not alphabetically like in other referencing styles (Bryan, 2017). The in-text citations are numbers in square brackets that correspond to the citation in the reference list (Smith et al., 2019). The references format is as follows; bracketed number, first name and last name initials of authors, paper title and sub-title, name of the journal, volume number and issue number, and the year of publication (Smith et al., 2019). The citations in this article follow all the formats of the IEEE referencing style. The citation format is professional and easy to use as the number referred directly to the article listed in the reference section (Brian, 2017; Hallberg et al., 2019).

The research design informs data collection, measurement, and analysis logically and coherently (Nieswiadomy & Bailey, 2018). The research study applies a typical phenomenological research design. The design dramatically resembles other qualitative research approaches such as ethnography, symbolic interactionism, and hermeneutics (Nieswiadomy & Bailey, 2018). As seen earlier, the research approach allows the patients to explain their own experiences using semi-structured questionnaires without the influence of theoretical perspectives. The questions responses provide the generic and disease-specific health-related quality of life. The similarity of questions used gives a foundation for analyzing the different responses offered by the participants.

The phenomenological research design in data collection aims at correcting raw data, as seen in this study (Nieswiadomy & Bailey, 2018). The design analyses discussions and reflections of direct sense perception and individual experiences on the researched phenomena. The researchers then analyze this basic information without the influence of external forces such as theories. The data, in this case, were analyzed using an inductive content analysis method. The inductive content analysis seeks to identify words, themes, or concepts similar in a qualitative data set (Nieswiadomy & Bailey, 2018). Using the findings, researchers can quantify, analyze and comment on the presence of various themes, concepts and words just like it is in this case. The above reflects a fundamental aspect of a phenomenological research design. Thus, the research design used in this article meets the requirements of a professional qualitative article