Research Critique 3 Sample Essay – N5366: Principles of Research in Nursing

Research Critique 3 Sample Essay – N5366: Principles of Research in Nursing

Ethical Issues in Research

The authors (Zilberman-Kravits, Meyerstein, Abu-Rabia, Wiznitzer, & Harman-Boehm, 2018) state that the study protocol was approved by the ethics committee of the Soroka University Medical Center and by the National Ethics Committee.  It is also registered as a Clinical Trial, presumably in Israel.  The authors also state that all women gave written informed consent to participate in the study.  Unfortunately, there are no details reported about how consent was done.  For example, the women were recruited from either a medical center or medical clinic where clinicians and others could observe them.  They should have been taken to a private room for the entire informed consent process, and for any intervention or data collection.  Their identities should have been kept anonymous.  Likewise all data should have been kept separate from clinic medical data, in an encrypted computer that only the investigators had access to (Gray, Grove, & Sutherland, 2017). Research Critique 3 Sample Essay – N5366: Principles of Research in Nursing

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Although the authors do not mention a benefit-risk evaluation, the reader could assume that it was a low risk intervention since it included lifestyle changes in diet and physical activity.  The only invasive part of the study was blood draws, which are a fairly routine or normal part of clinical care, so they pose no extra risk.  The potential benefits of improving metabolic outcomes would outweigh any risks due to blood draws.  Since the women had already given birth and should not be pregnant at this time, they were not a vulnerable population.  Currently being pregnant should actually have been an exclusion criterion, but the authors do not mention this.

 Measurement Tools

Although the main study variables were all measured from blood samples, even laboratory machines have specificity and sensitivity data (Gray et al., 2017).  In other words, the authors could have reported on how accurate the laboratory machines were to accurately measure these variables.  The authors did not describe the measures at all for accuracy.

Data Collection

Data collection procedures are barely mentioned in this study, another major study weakness.  On page 805, the authors briefly mention that blood was drawn at baseline, and one and two years postpartum.  Other demographic and extraneous variables were also collected at those time points.  There is no mention of who drew the blood or their qualifications for doing that task (Gray et al., 2017).  There is no explanation of where the subjects were when blood was drawn, although the reader could assume it was at the medical center or medical clinic where the subjects were recruited.  There is no explanation of how the blood was stored to both maintain its integrity, and to protect the subjects’ privacy.  Research-related blood samples must be kept in separate refrigerators or freezers from clinical samples, and should be kept locked for privacy. Research Critique 3 Sample Essay – N5366: Principles of Research in Nursing.

No mention is made of how many data collectors worked on this project, how they were trained, or how inter-rater reliability was maintained throughout the study.  Given the sample size and the two-year length of the study, there had to have been multiple people drawing blood, running analyses, and entering data.  None of this is reported.

References

Gray, J. R., Grove, S. K., & Sutherland, S. (2017). Burns and Grove’s the practice of nursing research: Appraisal, synthesis, and generation of evidence (8th ed.). St. Louis, MO: Elsevier.

Zilberman-Kravits, D., Meyerstein, N., Abu-Rabia, Y., Wiznitzer, A., & Harman-Boehm, I. (2018). The impact of a cultural lifestyle intervention on metabolic parameters after gestational diabetes mellitus: A randomized controlled trial. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 22, 803-811. doi:10.1007/s10995-018-2450-0 Research Critique 3 Sample Essay – N5366: Principles of Research in Nursing