Critical Appraisal of a 2-year Randomized Controlled Trial for Schizophrenia Treatment

Running head: CRITICAL APPRAISAL
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Critical Appraisal
Student’s Name
University

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Sungur, M., Soygur, H., Guner, P., Ustun, B., Cetin, I., & Falloon, I. (2011). Identifying an
optimal treatment for schizophrenia: A 2-year randomized controlled trial
comparing integrated care to a high-quality routine treatment. International
Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice, 15, 118–127.
Abstract / Introduction
The title of a research study offers an overview of the research subject to define what is
being compared or tested and the duration. The title of the study is informative and details the
subjects, duration and the type of treatment that was used (Bavdekar, 2015). From this title, the
researchers have presented a summary of the article to justify what exists in the study. The title
connects with the abstract to present a summary of the background, study methods, findings, and
even the conclusion. The information in the abstract has been presented in subtopics of
objectives, methods, results, and conclusion making it easy to identify any area that the reader
wants to look at.
The objective of the study presents the role of the study by framing the research topic to
make it clear for the reader. The methods section briefs the number of participants in the sample
frame, research design and the duration to provide an overview of the different components of
the methods section including the interventions made and how they were tested (Bavdekar,
2015). The results section presents important findings of the study while the conclusion offers
the position of the researchers on the overall study. Lastly, a good abstract is supposed to have
keywords that relate to the study which can be seen in the research topic.
Literature Review
Bolderston (2008) suggests that the literature of the study builds from the introduction
which is used as a background of the study to present information on the research study. In this

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section, existing literature on the topic has been presented to highlight what other studies found
and how this relates to the research problem. The literature of this study is brief and has been
covered under the introduction or background information of the study. The literature review
section of the study is also limited since it did not adequately address the existing literature to
identify gaps that define the basis of the study. This study did not have a conceptual framework
which is used to explain the relationship between variables but used two hypotheses to form the
basis of the study. According to Mourougan & Sethuraman (2017), a hypothesis is used to
narrow down the focus of the research by bringing direction and specificity to the research
study.
Methodology
To carry out a study, the researcher must sample the population which will be used as a
representative of the whole population. The participants were sampled purposively to ensure that
those who participated met the inclusion/ exclusion criteria. This sampling method is the best
since it creates uniformity in the participants where those who meet the established criteria
(Sharma, 2017). The purposive sampling method was well designed based on those who fall
within the age of 18-45 years and had a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia confirmed by SCID-
IV interviews. To qualify for inclusion after meeting the above criteria, the patient must have
lived with the illness for less than ten years, living with family members and residents of
Ankara.
The study employed a randomized control trial over two years to compare different
schizophrenia management approaches. The randomization of the patients has been documented
well where all the participants received antipsychotic Treatment as chosen by their psychiatrist
and were randomized into clinical management (OCM treatment group or the routine clinical