Support thread for students, mature and otherwise...

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um Feb 2020 5:22pm, 14 Feb 2020 1,733 posts	0 um Good luck with that Tomsmum! What sort of help do you want ? How long is the paper you're (presumably) critiquing? What's the aim? An appraisal of what's good / bad and suggestions for improvement? Or an assessment whether the paper 'proves' what it set out to find? Or something else? Besides here, the Excel thread will probably help, even if statistics based questions rather than just Excel. Is it an academic or practical study? When I did a 'Methods of Research' type module years ago, our assessment was basically trashing someone's research paper. But nearly all of us got so caught up in the stats abuses, we forgot to make it academic and cite other findings, contemporary stats etc. and also offer comparitive positve messages,
Tomsmum Feb 2020 5:49pm, 14 Feb 2020 2,164 posts	0 Tomsmum So this is the question: 'For this assignment you are required to assess and report on the quality of the given research paper. You are advised to use one of the critical appraisal tools provided in the course workbook. Your writing should be supported by evidence from literature and, where appropriate, from your practice experience. The assignment should include a critical commentary on the strengths and limitations of the research presented including consideration of: Context and rationale for the research Methodology and methods presented Presentation and rigour of results or findings Strength and relevance of conclusions The potential for this research to influence practice. • Word limit: 2000 words' The paper is Whitlatch, C., Heid, A., Femia, E., Orsulic-Jeras, S., Szabo, S. and Zarit, S. (2017) The Support, Health, Activities, Resources, and Education program for early stage dementia: Results from a randomized controlled trial, Dementia, online first view, DOI: 10.1177/1471301217743033. Its not very long My issue is very much that I just don't understand - I never read the results section just skip straight to the analysis. Its overwhelming and i don't understand how to work out the significance of the raw data, odds ratios, confidence intervals, ANOVA etc. which is what this module is all about but I can't understand the info they are giving me to read!
Tomsmum Feb 2020 6:03pm, 14 Feb 2020 2,165 posts	0 Tomsmum LindS if I don’t find any online resources then that might be good Thanks
um Feb 2020 6:51pm, 14 Feb 2020 1,734 posts	0 um Can you share the paper ? (fmail or mail to me?) I can find references to it, but cannot open it. But - I suspect you can answer a lot of it before worrying about the statistics, eg - what critical appraisal tools are in your workbook? Can you choose one of those and step through it? - the question seems to give the main headings/topics to answer :- - context & rationale of the reearch - methodology & methods (look for gaps, sampling techiniques, potential for bias, unexpected/unknowns in the selection) - presentation & rigour - if the stats obscure the facts, that's just as important as good stats. etc etc Can you break it down into sections, then get to specifics rather than looking at one big muddle? I'm not sure I can explain 'stats' via a Fetch thread, but if you have specific terms, or an example and question, feel free to fmail. Noting I may have some stats awareness (theoretical & applied in business), but no medically related background.
LindsD piemate Feb 2020 7:20pm, 14 Feb 2020 33,316 posts	0 LindsD piemate Fmail me your address x
Carpathius Feb 2020 7:58pm, 14 Feb 2020 18,736 posts	0 Carpathius Tomsmum, I found these two books very helpful when I had to do a compare/contrast between qualitative and quantitative and couldn't get my head around statistical tests. Curtis, E. and Drennan, J. (eds.) 2013 Quantitative Health Research: Issues and Methods. Maidenhead: Open University Press Greene, J. and D’Oliveira, M. (2006) Learning to use statistical tests in psychology. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
FreshStart Feb 2020 9:05pm, 14 Feb 2020 3,983 posts	0 FreshStart I have a copy of Statistics Explained you can have if it's any help. It's this book amazon.co.uk
Grast_girl Feb 2020 11:59pm, 14 Feb 2020 852 posts	0 Grast_girl I recommend this article to my students: nps.org.au I think it does a pretty good job on things like odds ratio, confidence interval etc.
Grast_girl Feb 2020 12:00am, 15 Feb 2020 853 posts	0 Grast_girl Also, there's a difference between statistically significant and clinically significant. If it's not a clinically significant change, what's the point?
Sam Jelfs Feb 2020 7:11am, 15 Feb 2020 579 posts	0 Sam Jelfs If you can share the paper tomsmum I think myself and others on here can give some comments that might help you