Critical Appraisal of a Research Article

Running head: CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE
Critical Appraisal of a Research Article
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE1
Question 1:
a) The research question of this study is:
Is the inflammation dietary practice influence the bone fracture caused by bone weakness or
loosing bone mass?
How much association is present between inflammatory dietary practice considering Dietary
Inflammatory Index (DII) and inflammation presents depending on age, gender and other bio-
demographical parameters.
b) The study design used in this research is the 8 years long longitudinal cohort study.
The advantage of using this design is that it can clearly show the variable changing patterns
over time that can help to find cause and effect relationship.
The major disadvantage of this study design is that it requires a large amount of time with a
very high commitment of the participants of this long term project.
c) To answer the research question a follow-up study will be required. This study used a
longitudinal cohort study, which is reliable for this type of analysis. Longitudinal cohort
study often misses the participants from baseline data during prospective follow-up that can
question the validity of the result. However, randomized control trial would be more accurate
to answer the question.
Question 2
a) The study recruited 3,648 participants (1,577 Males and 2,071 Females; mean age: 60.6
years) with/at risk of knee osteoarthritis participating to the Osteoarthritis Initiative.

CRITICAL APPRAISAL OF A RESEARCH ARTICLE2
b) The participants were recruited from four clinical sites in the United States of America
namely Baltimore, MD; Pittsburgh, PA; Pawtucket, RI; and Columbus, OH. The medical
data of the participants was collected from Osteoarthritis Initiative (OAI) database.
c) This study does not have any selection bias.
In this case the selection bias could be possible if the selected participants could have more
tendencies to consume high calorie diet frequently. However, in this study the participants of
the health clinics do not have any bias of consuming more food.
d) The follow-up details are not presented properly in this research considering the number of
participant involved in the follow-up process. After involving 3,648 participants
approximately 600 participants were considered for final result. Therefore, it can cause the
selection bias.
Question 3
a) As exposure the dietary practice and food frequency have been used for this study.
To measure this Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII) has been calculated from the collected
using Block Brief 2000 Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) to examine the food and
beverage intake of individual over past year considering their fat intake, preparation, fibre
intake, calorie intake, glucose intake.
b) The outcome of this research is occurrence of fractures and other bone weakening issues.
To measure this presence of fractures at baseline and during follow-up was obtained through
self-reported history of fractures at the most common sites for osteoporosis
c) This study has and measurement bias. Because, this study uses the verbal questionnaire
instead of observing their food intake practice. Therefore, the validity of this tool depends on
the truthfulness of the responses.