Critique of Selected Epidemiological Article - Research Paper Example

trated by what the authors did, which was to evaluate whether there was an association between older age and going back to a clinic in the Cardiovascular Health Study. The authors also sought to find the extent to which age and other factors measured and differed by the type of visits. The study reports two hypotheses, which were stated candidly. The authors theorized that the type of visit would have an association with key demographics namely lifestyle, health and function characteristics. The second hypothesis was that the oldest participants would have the worst retention for in-person clinic visits.

The design of the research study conducted by Strotmeyer et al. (2011) is a longitudinal epidemiological study. There was no intervention in the study because such investigations entail the following up of subjects over a protracted period, which is characterized by constant observation of various risk factors as well as health outcomes. Conducting a longitudinal epidemiological study is a vital step in investigating the relationships between exposure to recognized or supposed causes of disease and the ensuing morbidity or mortality.

This is the most appropriate research deign for the objectives in this study because it enables the tracing of same people for a long period (Jewel & Hubbard, 2006). Consequently, the variations aspects observed in the people are less likely to have the interference of cultural disparities over different age group. Due to these reasons, longitudinal studies obtain accurate results. The power analysis procedure was neither used to estimate the sample size requirements prior to undertaking the study nor to find the likelihood of committing a Type II error.

The presence of a power analysis enables the determination of the sample size required for the study based on information from previous research. It also used to verify whether the non-significant outcomes are due to the lack of association in the samples or the lack of statistical