Study Analysis

Study Analysis

1. How were rigour and potential bias reported in this study?

The concepts of rigour and potential bias were reported sufficiently in this study. The study demonstrated precision and soundness in all stages of the methodology, including planning, data collection, reporting, and analysis. For instance, the educational resources were made in such a way that they were appropriate for all participants. The development of the patient manuals was done by applying the principles of adult learning recognising the self-directed nature that is inherent among adult learners (Boyde et al., 2017). All the decisions regarding the style of the manual and the presentation were based on the instructional guidelines and design aimed at ensuring readability and patient engagement.

Another method used at ensuring rigour in the study was the use of grade six level or below language to ensure that all patients, including those with limited levels of health literacy, could read and understand them. All these ensured that all participants were on the same page and that none of them was biased against. Potential bias in the study was addressed by carrying out a randomised controlled trial, which could not favour the selection of certain patients. The randomisation process was conducted as blinded randomisation conducted by computer-generated sequences (Boyde et al., 2018). The study, therefore, fulfilled the requirement of rigour and potential bias prevention.

2. Discuss the internal validity and the limitations of the study

The internal validity of the study can be said to be very high. This is because the study applied various factors that made it likely to reject any potential alternative hypotheses. Among the steps taken was the randomisation of the trial design. Blinded randomisation using a computer-generated algorithm ensured that there were no systematic biases between the study groups. The use of a prior published study protocol also increased the internal validity of the study. The protocol ensured that the intervention provided to the study participants was given following specific procedures to avoid the introduction of undesirable effects, for example varying the procedure of the study from one group to another (Boyde et al., 2018). The declaration of the absence of conflicts of interests among the researchers is also a sign of a high degree of internal validity. The lack of conflicts of interest means that no one would try to skew the results of the study to favour certain predetermined positions for personal gain.

However, there some significant limitations that were reported by the researchers. Even though meticulous measures were taken to prevent the limitations from influencing the results of the study, they still deducted several points from the internal validity score of the study. One of the limitations was that the researcher who carried out the follow-up phone calls after three months and twelve months was not blinded, which could have affected the results (Boyde et al., 2018). However, the possibility of extreme effects was minimised by sending all the questionnaires to the participants before the telephone calls so that they just had to read out loud the answers they had already written down. To further decrease the influence of the researcher on the patient’s responses, a script was used for the calls, allowing no discussion about the answers with the patients. The researcher was also not allowed to provide the participants with any further education during the call. If any inquiries were made by the participants, they would simply be referred to an HF nurse who was not part of the study (Boyde et al., 2018). Even though there were limitations in the study, proper steps were taken to address them hence upholding the internal validity of the study.

3. Briefly discuss whether compliance/adherence with the intervention was reported in the article

The researchers did not report compliance/adherence with the intervention provided in the study. This is possibly because the degrees of adherence in both the control and the experimental groups had roughly the same levels of compliance, given that they were assigned to their respective groups in a randomised way. This means that if one factor is to be affected, roughly the same magnitude of effects will be experienced in both groups. Also, the study was based on a comparison of the two groups meaning that behaviours in both groups would be roughly identical, and hence all effect of adherence or non-adherence would be relative to each other.

References

Boyde, M., Peters, R., New, N., Hwang, R., Ha, T., & Korczyk, D. (2018). Self-care educational intervention to reduce hospitalisations in heart failure: a randomised controlled trial. European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 17(2), 178-185.

Boyde, M., Peters, R., New, N., Hwang, R., Ha, T., & Korczyk, D. (2017). Self-care educational intervention to reduce hospitalisations in heart failure: A Study Protocol. Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, 32(2), 165-170.