Critical Appraisal For Evidence Based Practice

Research Problem

Discuss about the Critical Appraisal for Evidence Based Practice.

While analyzing the paper that had been provided to the readers by the researchers, they have depicted the inconsistency that is present in the modern day in the information regarding caregivers that experiences more stress while caring for their patient. Different studies have been conducted over many years which states that different relationship shared by the caregiver and the care user often acts as the main determining factor about the intensity of the stress that may affect them. Certain cases depict as the caregivers who provide care to older parents suffer from more mental health issues than caregivers who are spouses of the care users. Many other researches again sated that sibling care giving results in more mental health stability than if care giving is provided by parents to children. Again gender issues are high stating that women are more ambivalent to paying care giving than men. All these leads to a maze like situation where clear idea about which category of caregivers faces the most metal and physical health related issue and hence the research problem was rightly identified by the researchers. If the research becomes successful, it would help to provide enough information to solve the issues in the field.

While going through the background that is provided by the author, it can be noticed that the author had reviewed a large numbers of articles in order to gather information about the different works that had been conducted by different researchers over the years. He have pointed out the various opinions that thay gave got from their own researchers. Different relationships among different caregiver care user pairs have been researched and opinions have been provided by them which had failed to give a consistent information about the issue depicted. Some have pointed that when caregivers are parents they develop more pressure on mental health than when care givers are siblings. Some have depicted that when caregivers are spouse, there is lesser emotions stress than when caregivers are son or daughters caring for their parents. Different researches have argued and given an exactly opposite opinion of the spouse caregivers being less emotionally stable. Several opinions among differ categories like parent caregivers caring for children or adult children caregivers caring for parents have also been denoted. Therefore he had been extremely successful in establishing the gaps that is present in the present day regarding the different levels of stresses experienced by caregivers. However, a negative aspect that is noticed here is that the researchers have selected journal which are very old like he had selected paper of Lüscher and Pillemer which had been published in the year 1998. Even many paper as old as 2001 and 2002 are also been selected by him. This is often not a proper method of reviewing because current articles like those after 2013 provided more recent works that had been conducted. Old papers often have views and ideas which have got obsolete and may have been challenged by other authors. Hence this is found to be a negative point. Another issue that must also be noted here that the review is found to be unbalanced as the the author had reviewed more papers on the relationship and very less paper on the criteria of gender. Effect of gender on the caring attitude and the development of mental strength have not been reviewed extensively although he had mentioned that works are less. However it would have been more balanced if he would have tried to review more gender based article of caregivers in this areas.

Literature Review

A theoretical framework can be found in the research papers where the authors had tried their best to establish the gaps that are present in the studies that have been conducted. They have reviewed articles to gather information which is existing and thereby have linked with the methodology that he had taken to collect data and thereby analyze it with proper statistical tools and models (van-Dyk, 2014). Therefore the author has been successful in properly framing his research and represents it to the readers.

The author had clearly mentioned the aim of the project. He stated the aim as he wanted to compare spousal care giving with that of the care giving provided by adult children, parents, siblings, other family members and also non family friends. He wanted to shed light on the different mental conditions that affect them along with the emotional well being which gets disrupted by care giving.

The author had correctly mentioned about the sampling that he had performed. He had taken the help of secondary data resources that had been provided from the 2007 Canadian General Society survey Cycle 21 (GSS-21). He had undertaken telephonic interview and recorded interviews of about 6140 cases where assistance were provided b the caregivers in the 12 months and 34 cases were excluded due to inconsistent and missing information about dependent and independent variable. This sampling that had been conducted by GSS is a non-probability sampling where the authority conducted the interview with the population above 45 year old only that is they had clear depiction of the population that could help them and acted accordingly. The sample was of adequate size as it provided a large amount of data as the sample size was also very large. The exclusion criteria were clearly stated that houses with cellular phones were excluded and those with phones were also not taken into consideration. Proper explanation for its exclusion is also provided which also states the background for exclusion.

No ethical considerations like maintain confidentiality, or proper preserving of data, taking utmost security concerns to prevent data linkage was not done which is a negative aspect (LoBiondo et al., 2014).

They have not provided any operational definitions as separate criteria in a particular definite section. However difficult terms re explained within brackets and hence can be understood by the author. The paper lacks proper operation definitions.

They conducted an interview in the form of survey with restricted options for each of the questions which helped them to get complete information in every of the criteria, the researcher had done a very good work by completely dividing each of the questions into definite answers which would ultimately help him in preparing a regression study in order to reach his aim. He had divided the caregivers into a number of categories depending upon their relations, judged their age, employment , health status, physical and mental condition along with dividing each of the into both the gender. The researcher had effectively been able to investigate each and every arena that needed to be ventured and thereby had given a proper survey methodology for it (Mouraviev et al., 2016). They have used definite scales like the Likert scales and others which proved the authenticity of the survey. However data collection had been secondary and also pilot study was not done in this case. This however, will not be able to affect any other important areas so can be neglected.

Theoretical Framework

Data analysis was mainly based in the most common model used for linear regression called the ordinary least square models. This model is excessively used in such kind of experiments because they are the most easiest while conducting statistical analysis and also provides a better scenario. The model was applied respectively to males and females that portrayed the best accurate approach possible. The researcher also tested for the significance of difference in order to reach an area where the independent variable of gender can be properly analyzed on its effect on care giving capability which is a very good approach for data analysis in statistics (LoBiondo-Wood et al., 2014). No errors and violations were also found when they assessed the key model assumptions thereby indicating them to be able to get fruitful results that they wanted.

While conducting the data analysis, it is very interesting to see that the author had been highly successful in correlating each of the independent variables with the dependent variables and thereby giving an excellent report on it. Not only they have established that more number of caregivers are women in comparison to male and they suffer more health related stress than males in all cases except in marital relationships where stresses are equal for male and female. . They have also shown that most cases show the primary recipient to be parents, followed by non family members, then children and then spouse. Physical health was more affected in case of males whereas mental health was more affected in case of female care givers. These are only some examples and more such correlations have been established that gives us an idea about the research gaps that had been able to resolve with the procedure (Heyvert et al., 2013). Proper tables have been provided to make the readers’ understand the results more clearly and good effort has been undertaken by the researchers.

A detailed study has been provided and discussed by the author. It is indeed impressive about the way that he had linked up the information to give a proper overview of the objectives. The self reported stress is found to be high among older caregivers. Women tend to report poorer mental health than male. Lack of gender differences are found in middle and old caregivers for children and both the gender tend to be equally affected. The researcher have found out through multivariate regression models that stresses are greater for both male and female when caring of spouse and children than caring for parents, siblings and others. Reports have also suggested that stresses for parental care giving and also spouse care giving for females  is high  because of greater obligations to provide care and depending upon the nature of relationship they also have fewer options to resist the pressure.

Aims and Objectives

They have explained that their inclusion of the multiple relationship types have helped them to provide a wide overview of the stresses experienced by different caregivers. These had helped the readers to understand the the gradual rise of stress level according to the different relationship shared by different carer-care recipient pairs (Quigley et al., 2015).  Limitations were also clearly depicted by the researchers showing the considerations that they have avoided which could have been the major reasons for the answer of the respondents that they provided like the living arrangements of the pairs, differences in residential propinquity. This had been just one example and similar limitations have been clearly noted by him as well. Thereby although strengths were not clearly analyzed, limitations have been depicted by them clearly. Recommendations although discussed but not in details only suggesting some gaps are still present which need to be overcome. They have also suggested drawing a relation between the age, gender and also the perceived ambivalence directly that they did not include in their study.

References:

References are done in APA 6^th edition correctly but the papers have been taken form old papers as old as 1995 which may provide data that had become obsolete (Souto et al., 2015). This is one negative aspect of the paper.

References:

Heyvaert, M., Hannes, K., Maes, B., & Onghena, P. (2013). Critical appraisal of mixed methods studies. Journal of mixed methods research, 1558689813479449.

LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2014). Nursing research: Methods and critical appraisal for evidence-based practice. Elsevier Health Sciences.

LoBiondo-Wood, G., Haber, J., Cameron, C., & Singh, M. (2014). Nursing research in Canada: Methods, critical appraisal, and utilization. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Logie, C., Bogo, M., Regehr, C., & Regehr, G. (2013). A critical appraisal of the use of standardized client simulations in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 49(1), 66-80.

Mouraviev, N., Mouraviev, N., Kakabadse, N. K., & Kakabadse, N. K. (2016). Conceptualising public-private partnerships: a critical appraisal of approaches to meanings and forms. Society and Business Review, 11(2), 155-173.

Quigley, J. M., Thompson, J. C., Halfpenny, N. J., & Scott, D. A. (2015). Critical Appraisal Of Real World Evidence–A Review Of Recommended And Commonly Used Tools. Value in Health, 18(7), A684.

Souto, R. Q., Khanassov, V., Hong, Q. N., Bush, P. L., Vedel, I., & Pluye, P. (2015). Systematic mixed studies reviews: updating results on the reliability and efficiency of the mixed methods appraisal tool. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 52(1), 500-501.

van Dyk, S. (2014). The appraisal of difference: Critical gerontology and the active-ageing-paradigm. Journal of aging studies, 31, 93-103.