What is Critical Appraisal?

Running head: CRITICAL APPRAISAL
CRITICAL APPRAISAL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1CRITICAL APPRAISAL
Q1. The purpose of this review is to determine the effectiveness of the non-pharmacological
interventions of sleeping issues in reduction of the depression symptoms (Gee et al., 2019).
Hence, the review has been focused on non-pharmacological interventions of sleeping issues that
reduce negative symptoms of depression of a person.
Q2. The review has been developed with the consideration of the PROSPERO protocol of the
literature review (Crd.york.ac.uk, 2020). The authors mentioned the registry in the PROSPERO
protocol for the search strategy of the research process.
Q3. The review is focused on the randomised control trial based papers. There total of five
inclusion criteria for the articles to be reviewed in this paper. The inclusion criteria are as
follows:
1. Randomised control trial
2. Sleep improving non-pharmacological intervention is the intervention chosen for the studies.
3. The trial is included with a control group which is not provided with sleep improving
interventions.
4. Depression symptoms of the participants have been measured with a specific and validated
instrument.
5. The articles are published in the English language in peer-reviewed journals (Gee et al., 2019).
Q4. The review process has been conducted on the randomised control trial based studies.
Hence, the studies have been included in the review are randomised control trial focused on sleep
intervention and relationship with depression reduction of the participants.
Q5. The study has been conducted based on the electronic database search strategy. The articles
have been searched from electronic databases. The databases used here are CINAHL,
CENTRAL, PsycINFO and Medline (Gee et al., 2019).

2CRITICAL APPRAISAL
Q6. The search terms used for finding the articles are effective. It has been seen that the search
terms are focused on sleep disorders and the effects of this factor. Also are related to the
intervention focused on the reduction of the depressive conditions. Hence, it can be stated that
the search terms are suitable for the purpose of this study (Grames et al., 2019).
Q7. The limiters used for the search are focused on limiting or narrowing the search to the
clinical trials for the chosen topic and also the English language based papers. The limiters are
focused on narrowing down the search to the identification of the articles with clinical trials or
the randomised control trials and also the English language (Gee et al., 2019).
Q8. In the study, the authors developed the PRISMA flow chart to highlight the identification,
screening, exclusion and inclusion of the articles for the meta-analysis purpose. The PRISMA
flow chart showed the identification of the articles with the proper emphasis of the process that is
the identification by database search and hand search. The PRISMA also identifies the exclusion
factors of the articles and the factors are duplicate articles, improper title and abstract, full-text
unavailability, control condition designed to improve sleep only, no measurement of depression,
intervention is focused on sleep improvement and other reasons. After exclusion and inclusion of
remaining articles, the PRISMA also identified two more factors for the exclusion of several
articles. Finally, the number of chosen articles for the meta-analysis has been highlighted.
According to Tam, Lo and Khalechelvam (2017), a PRISMA should be included with all the
search factors and the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the articles for a specific study. Hence,
as per McInnes et al. (2018), it can be found that the PRISMA flow chart developed by the
authors highlighted every aspect including the identification, screening, and eligibility
assessment and inclusion and exclusion criteria and it is a proper PRISMA flow chart.