Critical Review of Three Peer-Reviewed Qualitative Journal Articles on Public Health

Running head: Public Health 1
Public Health
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Public Health 2
Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Article 1: Study by Lucas, Murray, and Kinra (2013)...............................................................3
Validity...................................................................................................................................3
Inclusion criteria.....................................................................................................................4
Transferability........................................................................................................................4
Strengths and weaknesses.......................................................................................................4
Article 2: Study by Verhaeghe, De Maeseneer, Maes, Van Heeringen, & Annemans
(2011).........................................................................................................................................5
Inclusion criteria.....................................................................................................................5
Exclusion criteria....................................................................................................................5
Validity...................................................................................................................................6
Transferability........................................................................................................................6
Strengths and weaknesses.......................................................................................................6
Article 3: Study by Ahlin and Billhult (2012)...........................................................................6
Validity...................................................................................................................................7
Transferability........................................................................................................................7
Strengths and weaknesses.......................................................................................................7
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................8
References..................................................................................................................................9

Public Health 3
Introduction
The objective of this study is to conduct a critical review of three peer-reviewed qualitative
journal articles with a particular focus on public health. Library databases such as Medline,
Web of Science were searched with restrictions to articles published between 2008 and 2018.
Public health is a matter of concern in every country and studies are always conducted to
provide solutions to diseases that affect public health, thus this research was not restricted to
studies in a particular location. The articles critiqued were under the overall subject of public
health but with varying topics such as health beliefs in relation to lifestyle diseases, lifestyle
interventions on chronic diseases and perceptions of patients diagnosed with chronic illness.
Article 1: Study by Lucas, Murray, and Kinra (2013)
A review of qualitative literature by Lucas, Murray, and Kinra (2013) on the health beliefs of
UK south Asians in relation to lifestyle diseases was carried out with an aim of assessing
existing evidence in qualitative literature on health beliefs and views of the UK South Asian
adults.
Validity
The study used three electronic strategies to search a wide range of library databases for
relevant articles. These include broad-based terms, free-text terms and thesaurus terms. A
checklist criteria designed by Munro et al. (2007) was used to appraise the quality of articles
to be included in the study. The study design adopted a metaethnographic approach (Thomas
& Harden, 2008) to synthesize themes and patterns ascertained through reading and
reviewing the included studies. These descriptions of analysis and synthesis gives the study
its internal validity in addition to the fact that the study adopted standardised approaches of
assessing the various articles for inclusion in the study.
The study adopted an inclusion criteria in which all the articles to be included in the study
had to meet: