Critique of the Literature Review - Assignment Example

Article critique Introduction Article critique and analytical skills are fundamental to a scholar. They are important in reviewing research findings and reports before publication, understanding limitations of published research articles, and reviewing literature in research. This paper reviews an article for my proposed study. The article identified significance of leadership and “confidence in delegation” in nursing practice (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011, p. 522). Its background information established knowledge gap in the relationship between the two factors. The study sought to investigate the relationship among leadership styles, demographic factors, and confidence in delegation of duty by registered nurses in a nursing facility. Results identified lack of a relationship between confidence in delegating duties to “unregistered assistive personnel” and applied leadership style by registered nurses (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011, p. 522). The results also noted that fresh nurses with lower academic qualifications reported lower confidence in delegating duties to the unlicensed personnel than registered nurses. This however changed and after years of experience, the nurses with lower qualifications reported higher confidence than registered nurses did (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Critique of the literature review The article identified the study’s problem with clarity. Based on its literature review, registered nurses focus on clinical practice but disregard managerial and leadership roles. Previous studies had also not explored the relationship between leadership among registered nurses and their confidence in delegation despite a belief that leadership is significant to the nurses’ ability to manage unlicensed personnel and this knowledge gap informs the study’s problem. The researchers also identified frameworks for their study through the concept of transformational leadership and through the path goal theory. They defined a relationship between transformational leadership concept and problem, delegation among nursing leaders, and relationship between the Path-Goal theory and the delegation problem. The theory, the concept, and their proposed effect on an individual’s ability to empower followers and delegate duties to them makes the theory and concept appropriate for the study’s problem (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Reviewed literatures were appropriate for the topic and contributed to knowledge development on the topic’s variables. Selected information from the reviewed literature was relevant to the topic and the scope of the literature’s contents was consistent with the scope of the article’s aim. Most of the applied resources were however outdated because majority of the sources were published more than five years before the research period and some of the reviewed information could have been inaccurate. Using old resources undermined the authors’ selection of the reviewed resources because by compromising validity many changes occur across time. The review however offered a clear and fair approach to the topic. No research question was defined but research hypotheses were outlined and the applied research method, quantitative method, justified absence of research questions (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Critique of the methods and research design Participants’ description was adequate. The population was also defined as registered nurses and even though the research was conducted in a single facility, the Community Medical Center in Toms River, the quantitative approach to the study identified ability to generalize the study to all registered nurses. Inclusion criteria were the position of a registered nurse and employment in the Community Medical Center. Convenience sampling was used and was appropriate because of the nature of the participants who could be hard to recruit. The sample was not representative because of the limited scope of the inclusion criteria and applied sampling strategy. Using a single facility threatened bias because of possibility of the facility’s organizational culture, and policies. Convenience sampling could also recruit participants from a single subspace in the facility because of factors such as shift schedules. The study’s sample size however ensured sufficient statistical power that was determined by statistical software and sample size of 158 was found to be sufficient for a power level of 80 percent. The researchers reported institutional review board approval and this identified preliminary measures for an ethical study. The procedure for protecting participants’ rights was not defined but design implementation procedure was defined in a simple and clear manner that guaranteed replication of the study by a different researcher. The study also failed to define the researchers’ role in data collection and analysis and even though the processes are defined, it is not clear who performed them. Validity and reliability of the applied questionnaires were not discussed in the study and while no effort towards reliability was reported, application of a pre-modeled instrument identified the instrument’s suitability for the population. The applied research design, cross sectional design, was appropriate for exploring research hypotheses that sought to investigate confidence in delegations across different demographic factors (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Critique of the results section The results section described participants’ major characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, experience, and qualification. Frequency distribution was used to illustrate descriptive statistics on leadership styles and the overall results addressed set hypotheses by identifying lack of a significant relationship between leadership style and confidence in delegation. Test of the study’s hypotheses determined this. Analysis of variance on the effects of leadership styles on delegation confidence reported a high p-value of 0.24 and therefore identified non-rejection of the null hypothesis. There was however, a significant relationship between leadership style and nurses’ experience with a p-value of 0.02. The other hypotheses were also tested using p values. Application of tables to represent results was however limited with just a few tables for some of the inferential tests and effect size was not explored in the results (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Critique of the discussion section The researchers discussed the results based on the reviewed literature with focus on leadership skills and leadership education across different demographic factors. They explained the role of leadership education in varying confidence between registered nurses and nurses with diplomas and associated degrees during their earlier years of practice, a consistent concept to the developed construct from the literature review’s Path-Goal theory. The discussion however failed to address methodological limitation. It only explained failure to identify the participant’s units of operation that also undermined confidence in the representativeness of the applied ample. This failure extended to imply lack of ability to generalize the study’s findings, though the discussion does not address it. Threats to internal validity and reliability were not explored in the discussion section that also failed to state implications of the research findings on further research, and on the studied subjects. Lack of a significant relationship between the research variables could however justify failure to discuss implications of the study. The contribution, being contradictory to previous findings, was significant to the field as it suggested a change and the need for further research (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Overall evaluation The article’s source identifies its credibility and authority in the subject. Its professional approach that relied of existing literature to identify information gap for an empirical study also identifies its strength as a valid source of literature on the subject. Its limitation includes inadequate discussion of the findings’ implication but these can be derived from the results and other aspects of the article. The applied instruments, data collection procedure, and data analysis techniques identifies validity of the results and conclusion but the inclusion criteria constraint undermines reliability of the results for generalization. Even though the study faces challenges such as reliability issues and lack of discussion on implications, it offers valid literature on the relationship between nurse leadership and work delegation and is therefore significant to my study’s interest in nurse leadership. Its contribution to knowledge on leadership is also fundamental to literature review for further research on the topic of nurse leadership. The positive aspects of the article therefore identify its significance as a source of evidence for my proposed study (Saccomano and Pinto-Zipp, 2011). Reference Saccomanno, S. and Pinto-Zipp, G. (2011). Registered nurse leadership style and confidence in delegation. Journal of Nursing Management 19(4): 522-533. Read More