Article Matrix and Analysis Worksheet

This assignment will require you to take the PICO, 5 research articles and place them in a table for analysis. You will critique each article and identify the most important parts of the research, analysis, and findings.

Then you will summarize the articles by grading the research, and identifying gaps in the literature as well as possible interventions (see grading rubric and examples).

This will serve as the foundation for the work you will do in the Project/Practicum courses. As you work with your preceptor and finalize your capstone project, you will continue to build on this material. This assignment will be graded within 3-4 days of due date, with feedback provided once all grading has been completed.

This assignment enables the learners to meet Course SLO #1, 2, 3, 4

Instructions:

1.Identify your PICO or research question of interest.

2.Gather 5 research articles on your topic: be sure to save them and submit them along with the matrix; please make sure they are PDF documents.

3.Do not use clinical guidelines or Cochran Reviews, abstracts, future research reports or poster presentations. You can search for research only by indicating “research” when you do an advanced search. If you can’t answer a lot of the questions, it is probably not a research article.

4.We do not recommend that you use more than one qualitative research article or systematic review or meta-analysis. These are harder to evaluate because they have so much more information in them. Remember it is not individuals in these studies- it is the articles. Use the reference list in the systematic reviews or meta-analyses to find individual studies that may be easier to understand and use.

5.Review sample matrices and summaries

6.Use matrix table- one for each article and critique the parts of the article using the rubric.

7. Be sure to identify the evaluation tool used to grade the evidence such as (See below for grading the evidence tools)

8.Identify where there are issues with the articles and what gaps were not addressed with the research; be prepared this may change the way you look at your topic or may result in a slightly different direction for your area of interest. This is ok- that is what you want to accomplish with this assignment. It will really assist you as you move forward with your project.

9.New addition for summary effective Fall 2 2023: We want you to insert the verbatim summary that you copied from Elicit.org as part of your summary. DO NOT use it as a primary resource for this assignment. You will still be writing your own summary of the articles. What did you find was missing from the Elicit summary- did you still have to search for additional information to help inform your summary? This is a trial so we will see how it goes and give us feedback if this tool was helpful.

10. For this assignment you will turn in the matrix tables, summary, references and pdf copies of your 5 articles.

11. Key definitions:

1.Level of evidence (LOE): a hierarchical scale/method used to evaluate the level of evidence of the studies – such as Polit & Beck, p. 11, Johns Hopkins, etc. This is described as Level 1 evidence, Level 2 evidence, etc. and is based on the study design – e.g. – an experimental RCT, quasi-experimental, non-experimental/descriptive, etc.

2. Evaluation tool – used to measure the “quality” of the evidence: Multiple tools can be used to evaluate the strength and quality of the evidence found in the study. These are chosen based on the study design (RCT, quasi-experimental, etc.). You must provide the name/type of tool used to evaluate (e.g. CASP for RCT, Cincinnati Children’s for Case Control study, etc.) and provide the score you gave it (based on the tool used to grade – e.g. 11/11, 10/11…). Here is a video describing the critical appraisal evaluation with a Joanna Briggs evaluation tool. Links to an external site.

3.Instrument: What type of instrument or tool was used in the article to Collect their Data? This could be a questionnaire like a depression screening tool, a nurse satisfaction tool, or the like. You should describe the instrument-including how many questions, type of scale/data (a Likert scale, yes/no questions or ?) the instrument’s reliability and validity – Cronbach’s Alpha, or other ways they determined (if any) the R/V of these instruments. See Polit/Beck p. 314 they they discuss reliability and validity of instruments/tools or questionnaire. An example would be Physical and Cognitive Performance Test for Assisted Living Facilities (p. 324 in the box).