Critical Appraisal of Two Journal Articles on Mental Health and Evidence Informed Decision Making

Introduction
This assignment will critically appraise two journal article; one authored by Savic et al. (2013)
on “Separation from family and its impact on the mental health of Sudanese refugees in
Australia.” The second article by Liang et al. (2017) titled “assessing the Competence of
Evidence Informed decision-Making amongst health Service Managers.” The Critical appraisal
will majorly deliberate on the quality of this research articles considering the steps undertaken by
the researchers during the entire research process. The areas to be appraised include sample size,
research design, ethical concerns, data collection methods, statistical analysis. At the same time,
the study findings, the study limitation, and the implication the research findings has on the
nursing practice field will be critically appraised.
Tool selection
Critical Appraisals Skills Programme (CASP) tool was the best choice for critical appraisal of
article 1by Savic et al. (2013) on “Separation from family and its impact on the mental health of
Sudanese refugees in Australia” which is qualitative research. CASP is an international group
that promotes evidenced based approach in health and social care issues. Their tools have check-
list that is critical in enabling individuals make sense of research evidence and application in
practice (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, 2018). According to Critical Appraisal Skills
Programme (2018), critical appraisal skills enhances an individual’s ability to systematically
determine the trustworthiness, validity of the results published article. Therefore, based on this
organizations unrivalled expertise, their appraisal tool is the best to enable me achieve the
assignment objective.
For the quantitative research article appraisal tool was downloaded from Center for Evidence
Based Management website. This organization provides more information and tools on evidence
based practice (Center for Evidence Based Management, 2018).
Critical appraisal of article 1
The aim of this study has been clearly started by Savic et al. (2013). The study aim was to
elucidate on the perceived impacts of separation on the mental health and resettlement of
Sudanese refugees in Australia and how the refugees cope up with the potential stressor (Page,
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383-384). The authors have highlighted the existing gaps in knowledge by contextualizing the
research problem through past and current literature review, hence, justifying the study.
The authors of this article conducted a literature review by considering different research work
focusing on the Sudanese community profile, well-being of Sudanese refugee, and determinants
of refugee’s mental health. Though, a big proportion of the reviewed literature were valid, a few
of the researched journal articles were out dated. Therefore, the authors of this article ought to
have adhered to the 10 year time limit for researching an article. The background information of
the research problem have been provided by the authors through thorough literature review.
The researchers of this study adopted a qualitative approach methodology where by key
informants who are well conversant with Sudanese refugee’s affairs were interviewed. The
choice of using the qualitative approach was appropriate for addressing the research objectives.
According to Patten and Newhart (2017), in qualitative research the researchers identifies themes
through interviewing the study participants and the results are analyzed and presented in words.
Furthermore, the qualitative approach has the advantage of providing insight on the meaning of
particular event (Green and Thorogood 2018). This study used phenomenological analysis
approach, the authors focused on various key informants experiences with Sudanese refugee
resettlements in Australia as suggested in this article (p. 384). However, it is worth noting that
the researchers didn’t describe their theoretical perspective of this study, therefore, the researcher
didn’t justify the use of the research design in the study.
The authors have clearly started that 20 key informants were purposively sampled due to their
familiarity with issues around Sudanese refugee mental health (p.384). The purposive sampling
method was adequate for this study, this was to ensure that only persons who could provide the
right information were included in the study. However, the use of purposive sampling method
which is a non-probability method and a small sample size can compromise the research rigour
and validity by introducing selection bias and lower statistical power respectively. As a result the
findings of this study can be questioned and limit its findings being generalized to the general
population.
The sample size of the study participants was 20. The smaller sample size in a qualitative
research guarantees the data quality, and the participants selection was informed by their
knowledge about the topic. According to Chow et al. (2017) using a small sample size one has
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the opportunity of achieving rich and quality data. The same opinion has been propagated by
Mason (2017), he suggested that when conducting nursing or public health research using
qualitative approach a small sample size would be appropriate. To maintain trustworthiness and
rigour of the research results, a process of constant comparison was adopted and 25 interviews
were conducted until a point of saturation was reached and no new themes emerged (p.384). It is
evident that triangulation was used to maintain rigour. This was achieved attaining data through
interviewing different sources of key informants including six were mental health care providers,
five were primary health care providers, four were health service managers, three were social
workers, and two were policy makers, and the study participants were persons over 18 years of
age (p.384). Therefore, the recruitment strategy of the study participants was appropriate to the
study objective.
The data collected in this study was adequately to address the research question. This study has
clearly started that 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted with key informants in a span
of one year, in-depth-interviews was conducted and recoded by the first author. Furthermore, the
authors of this study have highlighted the questions that were used to guide the interview
(p.384). Therefore, the method used to collect data was explicit. According to Torrance (2012),
an aspect of maintained triangulation and reflexivity ensures good quality of qualitative research
article. For example, there was use of audit trail and the incorporation of divergent viewpoints
about the emerging themes leading to enhanced triangulation and reflexivity in the study (P.384).
A collaborative research with different specialties is core to the quality of any research. In fact,
Parahoo et al. (2017), in his work about the evidenced-based practices overwhelmingly
recognizes the benefits of collaboration between researchers when conducting research.
However, the authors of this article failed to justify the study setting for this research, reasons for
choosing this method of data collection was also not substantiated, and failure to clarify if there
was any modification of the chosen method for data collection is another failure. There is luck of
respondent validation in this study which has a negative impact on its quality. Respondent
validation is an important component of qualitative research because it provides rigour and
validity to the research and it can be achieved by giving feedback to the study participants and
accessing their opinions on interpretations (Torrance 2012; Hannes 2011).
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