Thesis Critique: An example using a nursing research.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

The effectiveness of an educational program on knowledge of depression among adolescents for teachers of selected secondary schools of ABC block.

Comments: The problem statements agreed with the title and seemed to be of educational significance.  The study was conducted because the majority of the adolescents especially the school students in the age group of 14-19 years are endangered of having depression and there is an increasing need for educating the teachers and the parents to identify depression so that the needy one’s can be referred for an appropriate diagnosis to psychiatric centers.

This study has the impression on three broad fields of nursing education, nursing administration, and nursing research.  

Nursing Education: This study encourages the nursing students to take up school-based educational programs to improve the knowledge of the teachers regarding depression among school students.

Nursing Administration: Administrators could arrange for the resources to promote mental health awareness in the school.

Nursing Research: the nursing student can take up this field for research to extensive level and study the other factors that could be involved like peer pressure, family issues, monetary problems.

The problem was very clearly stated, the key independent and dependent variables are identified appropriately along with the population, in short the title of the article is self-explanatory, which sets the context for the more specific research problem.

To conduct this study the researcher was assigned very well experienced faculty as a guide and as a subject, she selected teachers from a few secondary schools of ABC block, which is easily assessable and the proximity to the university.

PURPOSE AND OBJECTIVES:

Purpose

To evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program regarding depression among adolescents which will help the teachers for recognizing the signs and symptoms of depression among adolescents and referral of students, which in turn can play an important role in bringing down the incidence of depression among adolescents.

Comments: The researcher conducted this study in order to examine how much the awareness and educational program on depression among adolescents were able to make an impact on the teachers.
This study is beneficial to the teachers, parents and students and the community. 

Objectives:

The objective were to:

• Assess the knowledge of the teachers regarding depression among adolescents by a structured knowledge questionnaire.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of an educational programme on depression among adolescents for secondary school teachers

Comments: Objectives wore clearly specified, as it distinctly assessed the knowledge of teacher by a structured questionnaire, and evaluate the effectiveness of an educational programme on depression among adolescents.

HYPOTHESES:

Hypotheses were tested at 0.05 level of significance.

H₁: there will be a significant difference in the mean pre-test and post-test knowledge scores regarding depression among adolescents, in teachers.

Comments: This research tested hypotheses about how effectively the mean pre-test and post-test could be used to administer the teacher’s knowledge scores regarding depression among adolescents. The purpose was clearly and concisely stated and agreed with the title and it clearly defines the relationship between different variables.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Comments: The researcher cited the clear review of literature; several appropriate references were used in the introduction section. These statements contributed to the overall understanding of the subject and to the reasoning for establishing the problem statement.

Also Read: How to write Annotated Bibliograpgy?

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

The conceptual framework of this study is based on Stufflebeams CIPP (Context Input Process Product) model.

Context: in this study the context was the teachers who are teaching in the English medium Secondary schools of abc block.

Input: in this study the educational program and knowledge questionnaire on depression among adolescents was the input. The educational program was given to teachers for a period of 1 hours. It consists of the causative factors, signs and symptoms of depression and preventive aspects of depression among adolescents.

Process:  in this study first a survey was conducted among all the English medium secondary school teachers in abc block by administering the knowledge questionnaire regarding depression among adolescents.

Product: in this study the output was the gain in knowledge scores regarding depression among adolescents or no gain in knowledge scores regarding depression among adolescent in terms of knowledge questionnaire scores.

Comments: The researcher used CIPP model to concisely present the Context, Input, Process and Product of the research, article clearly presents the framework using Context as the teachers of the English medium schools taking age, educational qualification and years of experience as the demographic variable. As an Input researcher provided educational talk regarding depression among adolescent. In Process researcher conducted post-test questionnaire on depression among adolescents to evaluate knowledge scores. The outcome of this model was computed in terms of Gain in knowledge score vs. No gain in knowledge score. The model used is appropriate for the research and has rationalized the framework used.

VARIABLES

Independent variable: educational program

Dependent variable: Knowledge on depression among adolescents

Comments:  The variables independent and dependent are clearly reflected in the framework and clearly defines the conceptual definition of the variables consistent with the operational definition.

RESEARCH DESIGN:

The Research design adopted for the present study was, phase 1 is descriptive survey design and

For phase 2 was one group pre-test post-test design.

Comments: The research design model used here is the Pre experimental design (One group pre-test post-test design). This model clearly involves description of the research approach (Phase 1: Survey, Phase 2: Evaluative Research design, Phase 1: Descriptive survey Design, Phase 2: One group Pre-test- Post-test design), Study Settings (English Medium Sec. School of abc Block) Sample Size ( Population: 151 Teachers of English medium Sec. School of abc Block), Sampling Technique (Phase 1: convenient sampling, Phase 2: Purposive Sampling). The study involves an intervention through effective educational programme on depression among adolescents to teachers of English medium sec school of abc block and intervention clearly describes the treatment appropriate for examining the study purpose and hypothesis. The types of comparison are specified before and after (1 group pre-test post-test design between groups) and does the comparison adequately illuminate the relationship between the independent and dependent variable.

SAMPLE AND SAMPLING TECHNIQUE:

In this study sample consists of secondary school teachers of selected English medium secondary schools who were willing to take part in the study during the period of data collection, which was from January 5^th to February 5^th 2015.

Sampling technique:

For phase one, from twenty-four English medium school of abc block, twelve schools were included in the study. From each school, all secondary school teachers who were available during the time of data collection were selected conveniently as participants.

For phase two, the school teachers who had scores of poor, average and good in the knowledge questionnaire were selected, thus the technique used was purposive sampling technique.

Comments: The sample represents the population i.e. 151 teachers of English medium Sec. School of abc. The sampling method is adequate to produce the sample that is representative of the study population which was calculated based on the pilot study findings.  

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS:

• Administration permission from the Dean, XXX College of Nursing, XXX.
• Permission from the block education officer, abc block.
• Administrative permission from school principles of selected secondary schools of abc block.
• Ethical committee clearance from institutional ethics committee, XXX University.
• Written informed consent from the participants of the study.

Comments:  The study was approved by an ethics review committee- administrative permission from the Dean, CON, XXX, and Permission from the Block education Officer abc Block, Administrative permission from all School Principals, Ethical committee clearance form institutional ethics committee XXX University and Written informed consent from the participants of the study was obtained by the researcher.

DATA COLLECTION METHODS:

The following data collection instruments were used in order to obtain the relevant data.

Tool 1: Demographic Proforma

Tool 2: knowledge questionnaire on depression among adolescents

Comments: In this study the data collection process is clearly described where tool use were Tool 1: Demographic Proforma, (developed to acquire the background data of the teacher (sample) the tool consisted of age, qualification, and work experiences) Tool 2: knowledge questionnaire on depression among adolescents (knowledge on depression among adolescents was assessed by administering the knowledge questioners to the selected school teachers). The method use here is appropriate which. To ensure the content validity, the tool along with the blueprint, objectives, validity criteria checklist was submitted to seven experts chosen from (field of psychiatric, social work, child health nursing, community health nursing and mental health nursing based on their expertise and experience in the problem selected. There was 100% agreement for all items and necessary modification were done as per the expert’s suggestion.

ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA:

Analysis and interpretation of data collected from 151 secondary school teachers. The data were analysed based on the objectives of the study using descriptive and inferential statistics. The SPSS 16.0 version was used for the analysis of data.

61.6% did not have previous knowledge on depression among adolescents

38.4% has knowledge on depression among adolescents

(21.9% had obtained knowledge through media, 6.6% had obtained the knowledge through school awareness and 2.0% obtained knowledge through other sources such as newspapers and radios.)

Comments: The author conducted pre-test for all 151 samples in which 3.3% had poor knowledge about depression among adolescents 23.8% had an average knowledge 35.09% had good knowledge and 37.7% wore excellent. The post test was conducted for 94 samples where 72.3% of samples had excellent scores, thus the finding of the study addresses each objectives of the hypothesis. The data analysis procedure is appropriate to the type of data collected, reported with the rationale for use the of selected statistical tests, the tables presented have clear title with the findings interpreted correctly, significant and non-significant findings are well explained and was reported with 0.05 level of significance. Hence the null hypothesis is rejected and the research hypothesis is accepted. Thus the education programme was effective.

CONCLUSION, RECOMMENDATION AND LIMITATIONS:

Conclusion:

The teachers are an important aspect of a student’s daily life. The present study has concluded that majority of the teachers had average knowledge regarding depression among adolescents and after the educational programme was delivered the knowledge has improved to excellent knowledge. The teachers can utilise this knowledge for the early identification of adolescents with depression and prompt referral need to be done.

Recommendations:

The recommendations of the study are:

• The study could be done using true experimental design
• A comparative study can be done among teachers and parents.
• A larger sample size including the government school teachers could be taken up.

Limitation:

• Convenient and purposive sampling limits the generalization of the study.
• The present study was confined to secondary school teachers.
• The present study did not consider the influence of extraneous variables such as media influence etc. 

Comments: In this study the conclusion is presented very precisely, illustrating all the statistical outcomes and the result of the study is clinically significant.

The study was confined to the secondary school teachers and also did not consider the influence of extraneous variables such as media influences etc.

The recommendation or the future scope of this study is suggested to increase the sample size even taking the teachers of govt. secondary schools, as well as the parents of the adolescents, it has also been suggested to incorporate the true experimental design to make the study more elaborative, thus the recommendation suggested here is meaningful and realistic.

OTHERS:

Strength:  In this study the researcher could come up with the outcome what she had considered as a research hypothesis, the tool used here turned out to be appropriate in evaluating the effectiveness of the knowledge that was provided to the teachers regarding the depression among adolescents, hence the study was effective to an extent.

Weakness: The study was confined to the researcher’s feasibility with a very small sample size with no diversities in the quality of samples, as she selected only the teachers from English medium secondary schools, were majority of the teachers had the educational qualification of B. Ed.

Report: The report was well presented concisely written, grammatically correct and free of jargon.

REFERENCE STYLE:

Example:

Aktar, A. (2014). A comparative study of depression among adolescents in relation to gender, domicile and family type; with special reference to Kashmir. Indian journal of health and wellbeing, 5(3), 395-397.

Comments: The reference cited in this study is according to American Psychiatric Association (APA) style, which is recommended and appropriate for this research.