The Importance of Skin to Skin Contact After Cesarean Delivery - Essay Example

"The Importance of Skin to Skin Contact After Cesarean Delivery" is an outstanding example of a paper on child development.
The research article, ‘Skin to skin contact after Cesarean delivery: An experimental study’ was authored by Gouchon, Gregory, Picotto, Pocotto, Patrucco, Nangeroni, and Giulio and published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins in the year 2010. The article investigates the relationship between skin-to-skin contact after cesarean delivery and a newborn’s risk of contracting hypothermia. This paper seeks to review the article.

Critique of the problem statement

The article’s problem statement is unambiguous and easily understandable. Further, the statement is easily identifiable because of its position at the end of the literature review, a traditional location for problem statements. The statement also develops a persuasive and convincing argument for a new study by identifying information gaps in the research topic. Consequently, it has significance in nursing because of its objective of identifying a solution to hypothermia among Cesarean delivered babies, a role that falls within nursing’s scope (Gouchon et al., 2010). The researchers applied the “naturalistic paradigm” that assumes higher accuracy and comprehensiveness in research when the researcher directly accesses participants, and a quantitative research approach (Polit and Beck, 2007, p. 15). All these correspond to the research problem that aims to develop quantitative data for analysis (Polit and Beck, 2007).   

Critique of literature review

The article’s literature is signed up to date as it majorly consists of resources that were published within two years from the research period. Even though the review is based on secondary information sources, it is explorative and offers a strong ground for the identification of the research problem and problem statement. Consequently, the review offers a direction to new research, the direction set by the problem statement and explored through the research problem (Gouchon et al., 2010).

Critique of the conceptual framework

One of the identified weaknesses of the article is its failure to identify and define key concepts. Even in cases where meanings are offered, the definitions are not conspicuous for easy identification. The researchers, in the planning and data collection of the research, adopted a pre-established design that was appropriate in shaping the research methods (Gouchon et al., 2010).   

Critique of hypothesis

The research explicitly states its hypothesis. Even though it offers no explicit research question, the hypothesis is appropriately worded and identifies the variables that are infants’ body temperature and treatment groups.

Critique of research design

The research design was the most vigorous for the purpose statement. It was adequate for selecting sets of data towards solving the identified problem. This led to sufficient comparisons towards a conclusion over the two sets of treatment groups in the research, infants who were subjected to normal care and those who received skin-to-skin contact. The design’s sample size of 68 pairs was also appropriate because it was large enough to ensure internal validity. Bias and other threats were also significantly minimized by the research design through randomization of subjects and appropriate sample size. Further, blinding in the randomization process through concealed envelopes facilitated limited construct validity and external validity (Gouchon et al., 2010).

Conclusion

The article is therefore well presented in a research article’s traditional format with identifiable elements of a research paper. The researchers were also explorative in each of the article’s sections to ensure a rich literature review for a strong problem statement, and a framework for the research’s methodology.