Critically Appraising Quantitative Studies - Research Paper Example

Critical appraisal of quantitative studies Critical appraisal of quantitative studies Critical appraisal entails balanced assessment of the strengths and benefits of research against the weaknesses and flaws and aims at ensuring high quality maintenance in research (Gerrish & Lacey, 2006). The factors that must be assessed when critically appraising quantitative studies are validity, reliability, and applicability. Validity entails the extent to which the result from a given quantitative research is true and lacks bias.

Validity can be internal or external validity where internal validity entails the extent to which the observed effects are true for the people in the study while external validity is the reflection to the target population by the study for people who are not included in the study. Biases that may lead to internal invalidity include statistical analysis, withdrawals and dropouts, blinding, data collection methods, allocation bias, confounding, intervention integrity. Internal validity occurs in unbiased results and only internally viable research can be generalized ensuring external validity.

Reliability denotes the amount of trust that can be given to a research and is therefore a measure of the likelihood for reproducing the same research (LoBiondo-Wood & Haber, 2010). This is determined using statistical techniques relating to frequency of occurrence of chance and uncertainty of an observation. The threshold for chance use to check for reliability is 5% where a research phenomenon is reliable if it occurred more than 5% and its occurrence is therefore not by chance. Applicability is the extent to which the results obtained can have an impact on practice where contrast is made against statistical significance.

This entails checking if the research will generate any difference on the users of the research. The most important factor is validity because applicability is dependent on reliability and validity but results can be reliable but not valid making them unable to be generally applied. It is also more important because reliability is a necessary condition for validity however it is not a sufficient condition. In conclusion, it is more important where the research outcome is both reliable and valid for the best research outcomes.

ReferencesGerrish, K., & Lacey, A. (2006). The research process in nursing. Oxford: Blackwell Pub.LoBiondo-Wood, G., & Haber, J. (2010). Nursing research: Methods and critical appraisal for evidence-based practice. St. Louis, Mo: Mosby/Elsevier.