Question and Answers

undergraduate level, public health major

PUBH 303 – Assignment 1

Critical appraisal of published studies (20%)

This assignment involves critically appraising a published study. Your critical appraisal should be in the context of the questions listed below. The paper that you need to appraise has been uploaded for you. The title of the paper is as follows:

El Hajj, MS; Kheir, N; Al Mulla, AM; Shami, R; Fanous, N; Mahfoud, Z R. Effectiveness of a pharmacist-delivered smoking cessation program in the State of Qatar: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Public Health. 2017; 17:215.

General Instructions:

• You should have a cover page with your name, ID and assignment titles.
• You need to organize the response to this assignment as question answer format.
• Hand written work will NOT be accepted. No email submission. The whole work should be word processed and submitted on the Black Board. The submission should also use the Calibri font of size 12 and with 1.5 line spacing. You should have the normal margin with 1” all sides. Page numbers should be at the bottom right corner on all pages, except on the cover page.
• Delayed submission will incur 10% reduction in mark per every delayed day.
• Any sign of plagiarism means zero marks for the assignment. Marker has the right to use a QU plagiarism software to check for any plagiarism.
• Copying from each other in part or full, will lead to zero marks for all involved.
• Any complete sentence taken form the given paper should be within “inverted” commas and indicating the page and line number within brackets. Likewise, if you have taken sentence form any other sources, it should be duly referenced.
• Most important purpose of this assignment is to assess if you can appraise the given paper and understand them fully in terms of what, why, how and why not related to various aspects of study design and analyses.

In appraising the paper your discussion should cover the issues listed below. Please make sure your discussion is fully in the context of the research question and the paper that you are appraising.

Critical Appraisal Question

 

1. Results (8 points)
2. What are their main and key findings? Study carefully what was reported in each of the tables and write down the major findings of each tables, briefly in few sentences. Do not just reiterate the numbers in the tables but understand the purpose of each table and summarize the purpose and findings but very briefly and broadly.
3. What are the major statistical methods that researcher use to analyze their data?
4. Pick any three ORs presented in the paper and interpret them clearly. Your interpretation should in the context of the research presented in the paper.
5. List all causal criteria that have been considered in the paper.
6. Were there any evidence of temporality?
7. Is there a dose response gradient?
8. Did they provide evidence to suggest the biological plausibility?
9. Do the results make sense? Are the results consistent and coherent with known knowledge?
10. How strong was the effect? How big was the effect? How precise are the effects? Why did they use a confidence interval? Why did they use p values? Pick up a confidence interval and interpret the meaning of it.

 

2. Discussion (2 points)
3. Are the main findings consistent with other studies?
4. Do the findings make biological sense? Is the effect size practically relevant?
5. Discuss if the association they found was possibly causal?
6. What are the strengths of this study?
7. What are the limitations of the study?

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