Critical Appraisal of the CN SNAP Trial Study

Running head: ARTICLE APPRAISSAL
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Article Appraissal
Student’s Name
University

ARTICLE APPRAISSAL 2
Harris, M. F., Chan, B. C., Laws, R. A., Williams, A. M., Davies, G. P., Jayasinghe, U.
W., . . . Milat, A. (2013). The impact of a brief lifestyle intervention delivered by generalist
community nurses (CN SNAP trial). BMC Public Health, 13(375), 1-11.
In a critical appraisal of research studies, it is important to look at the major parts of the
study that determined how it was done. Richards (2010) suggests that when assessing a research
article, the researcher has to asses the study elemets to determine how they were organized and
used to form the strengths of the study. The researcher can also look at implication to asses how
the study adds value to the existing research.
Harris, et al. (2013) study used a quasi-experimental trial involving four generalist
community nursing services. This type of design is used to determine the causal effect on the
study popuation. This study is similar to randomized controlled trials since the participant groups
were randomly placed in either of the study groups. The strength of this study is seen in the
random assignment of the participants to any of the two groups. This means that any of the
participating groups could have fallen in any of the study groups (Handley, Lyles, McCulloch, &
Cattamanchi3, 2018). The four services being investigated were randomly assigned to either of
the two groups (early intervention and late intervention group). This randomization worked well
since it reduced the internal validity issues that have been raised in quasi-experimental styles.
Accordin to Harris, et al. (2013) the early intervention group entailed nurses and clients who
underwent prior training as an intervention measure for the study was done at two levels. The
service-level intervention was delivered to participating community nurses to improve patient
intervention. In the client-level intervention, the focus was on lifestyle changes inconsistency
with the Australian recommendations. This difference in the two groups forms the basis of the

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study since it creates differences between the two groups then the researcher has to develop
several hypotheses for solving the research question.
This study used the telephone administered survey to collect data from the clients on the
topic. Surveys have been regarded as the best data collection methods since they allow the
researcher to reach out to many participants. Although the telephone administered survey is more
difficult than the computer-administered or paper survey, it still carries the benefit of reaching
out to many participants. Sharkey & Haines (2011) argues with the data collection method, the
researcher can verify and clarify some of the questions for the participant due to the
heterogeneity and diversity of the participants. The strength of this data collection method lies in
its ability to allow the researcher to reach out to consumers rather than the other way round. In
most cases, telephone surveys have the electronic instrument where the responses are filled
directly thus allowing real-time analysis of the findings. This data collection method allows the
researcher to reach out to the participants at any time and from any location. However, this
method is limited by the fact that it fails to account for respondent contextual factors which help
influence the nature of responses that the patient makes. This is the reason why the observation
and interview methods are the best to address contextual elements.
The sample population was defined through purposive sampling. The researchers used a
screening and selection process for clients who had been referred to the facility between 2009
and 2010. This means that the researcher only targeted and purposively sampled for the intended
patients to increase the outcome of the results. This type of sampling is the best since it limits the
use of respondents whose information may be irrelevant. The power of quasi-experiments makes
it easy for the researcher to use purposive sampling since the design allows randomization of
participants during selection which increases the generalizability of findings.