University SIDS Report: Sleeping Practices and Infant Death Analysis

This report investigates Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a significant cause of infant mortality, particularly in babies under one year old. It explores the various factors contributing to SIDS, including physical and environmental elements, the infant's age and sex, and the presence of secondary smoke exposure. The report emphasizes the importance of sleeping environments and practices, such as sleeping position (side or stomach), soft bedding, and bed-sharing with parents or siblings. It utilizes a systematic review method to examine the relationship between different sleeping practices and SIDS, detailing the research question, design, and methodology, including inclusion/exclusion criteria, search strategies, and data extraction. The systematic review aims to provide a comprehensive summary of relevant research, reducing bias and enhancing the robustness of evidence. The report concludes that a systematic review study is the most effective way to address the research question, given the challenges of collecting primary data, and highlights the benefits of this approach in terms of cost-effectiveness and ease of execution.

Running head: SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
Sudden infant death syndrome refers to an unexplained death during the deep sleep condition of
the child and it is often observed that the babies who are under the age of 1 year, are generally
most vulnerable to this disease. Often, children die in their crib that is why the disease is known
as crib disease as well. Very often it is noted that, the combination of physical and environmental
factor also make the child more vulnerable to the disease. In addition to this, the age of the child,
sex can also be a contributive factor for this SIDS. Therefore, presence of secondary smoker,
family history of death due to SISD, premature condition of the baby are also sometimes
responsible for the SISD among the children in the age group of 2-4 months. Along with this the
sleeping environment of the children can also enhance the risk of SISD among the children. It is
observed that sleeping on the side or on the stomach, sleeping on a soft region, sharing beds with
parents or siblings can enhance the risk of SISD among the children of low age group (Horne,
Hauck & Moon, 2015). Relation of different sleeping practices associated with the SISD is
examined. In addition, the search strategy is discussed by which the research question can be
addressed. Therefore the methodological features of the selected strategy is also highlighted in a
brief manner.
Research Question
Are different sleeping practices of infants associated with Sudden Infant Death Syndrome?
Research Design
In order to address the above depicted research question, the systematic review method
can be used. A systematic review refers to a specific type of literature review. In this, type of
literature review, a systematic method is used to collect the secondary data from the existing
studies. After that, the collected data are appraised in a critical manner and those findings are

2SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
synthesized in a qualitative manner. The identification of a specific research question will narrow
down the area of research and it will help to synthesize the studies that are correlated with the
research question. Moreover, the use of systematic review method in this research will help to
manage the cost of the research as this method is cheap and the whole process can be completed
in a short time period as well. A systematic review method mainly try to provide an exhaustive
and complete summary of the latest research article which are relevant to the research question
(Gough, Oliver & Thomas, 2017). In a systematic literature review, at first a specific research
question is identified. As in this case, the research question is already identified, so identification
of the research question will not be required in this systematic research study. After the
identification of the research question, a thorough search of relevant literature will be performed
in order to find the relevant literature related to the research question. The use of systematic
review in this research method is very advantageous in many ways. It can be said that, the
reliability, transparency and rigour principle of the systematic review can enhance the strengths
and quality of this research. Moreover, the systematic literature review is unlike the traditional
one in which the same studies are cited in a frequent manner and as a result, there is a persistent
bias in the literature review as well. In contrast, using a systematic approach in the research, this
bias is reduced (Booth, Sutton & Papaioannou, 2016). By incorporating the principles like broad
search strategies, inclusion and exclusion criteria, predefined search strings will force the
researcher to find more and more studies which are related to the topic. Simultaneously, the
deconstructions of the research question, as per the intervention, population, comparator and
outcomes will ensure the fact that the literature review is highly focused throughout the process.
Along with this, systematic review strongly concentrate on the validity of the existing study,
evidence of the study, impact of the study as well and as a result, the use of systematic review

3SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
will effectively enhance the robustness of the evidence. It can said that systematic review will
allow the researcher to analyze the studies more critically and this will help to enhance the
breadth of the researches (Booth, Sutton & Papaioannou, 2016).
Methodology of the Strategy
As a part of the methodological features of the search strategy the following steps can be
followed. As the research question is already developed so this step of the methodology can be
skipped.
 After the identification, an exclusion and inclusion criteria for the search will be
determined. As a part of the inclusion criteria, it can be included that, all the study should
be based on US and Canada. Along with this, the study must be published in a peer
reviewed journals and must contain primary data as in this study systematic method will
be used. Moreover the most recent studies that is published in between 2013-2018 will be
used (Moon & Task Force, 2016).
 Next, a search strategy will be identified in order to identify the most relevant journals. In
each of the searches the strategy includes search items, database searching and search
limitations such as range of search dates, types of the literature (e.g., peer-reviewed
articles). In the search strategies, the date and number of the articles will be also
recorded. For searching the literature, PubMed, CINAHL WILL be used for finding the
articles and the published date of the articles will be from 2014 (Moon & Task Force,
2016). During the literature search all the terms of each topic will be included. For
example it can be said that key words like SISD, sudden death, cot death with pacifier
can be used during the search process. In addition, the key words like sleeping

4SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
environment, sleeping practices, relation of sleeping position and child death by SISD
should be included as the research question is related to the sleeping posture.
 Next, the searching, screening and selecting scientific articles will take place and the
most relevant article will be identified and those literature must be capable of answering
the research question identified. The researcher will find the answer of the research
question from the identified articles ( Okoli, 2015).
 After identifying all the relevant articles, the sources of the articles will be reviewed
again in order to validate the existing literature resources (Okoli, 2015).
 Next, the data will be extracted from the identified literature. Therefore the quality of the
data will be assessed and the risk of bias will also be analyzed. However, if it is observed
that, the existing literature are unable to answer the research question, then “and”, “or”
can be used in between the key words for searching more literature.
 In the data extraction method, participants of the study, method of the study and the
outcomes of the study can be included.
 After all the data extraction, the data will be combined and analyzed by using complex
statistical techniques in order to conclude a result from the systematic review study
(Okoli, 2015).
Hence, it can be concluded that, the use of systematic method, in finding the answer of the
given research question, will be the best way. As the study is related to the child’s death, so
it will be very difficult to collect primary data from various sources. Hence, in order to
conduct a study, to find the answer of the research question, the systematic review study will
be most effective as it is not much costly and can be conducted in an easy way.

5SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME
References
Booth, A., Sutton, A., & Papaioannou, D. (2016). Systematic approaches to a successful
literature review. Sage.
Gough, D., Oliver, S., & Thomas, J. (Eds.). (2017). An introduction to systematic reviews. Sage.
Horne, R. S., Hauck, F. R., & Moon, R. Y. (2015). Sudden infant death syndrome and advice for
safe sleeping. Bmj, 350, h1989.
Moon, R. Y., & Task Force on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. (2016). SIDS and other sleep-
related infant deaths: evidence base for 2016 updated recommendations for a safe infant
sleeping environment. Pediatrics, 138(5), e20162940.
Okoli, C. (2015). A guide to conducting a standalone systematic literature
review. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 37.