Research Article Appraisal Part Two Assignment.docx - 1...

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Research Article Appraisal, Part Two Assignment
Brenda Arnett
College of Nursing and Health Innovation, University of Texas at Arlington
NURS 5366: Principles of Research in Nursing
Denise Cauble, PhD, RN, CWOCN Clinical Assistant Professor
February 1, 2020

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Continuation of the critical appraisal of, Reducing nurses' stress: A randomized controlled
trial of a web-based stress management program for nurses (Hersch et al, 2016). The focus in this
continued appraisal will be on the following topics; sample, population, setting, any legal or
ethical issues, data collection, measurement, and analysis, research findings and finally, the
overall evaluation of the study.
Research Setting, Population, and Sample
Research setting
The research for this study took place in a very localized area of the United States.
Nurses were used from six different hospitals located in the north-eastern portion of the country,
five hospitals were located in the suburbs of Virginia and the other was in New York City. A total
of 36 nurses participated from the Virginia based hospitals and 68 nurses from the New York
City hospital. The study commenced April 22, 2014 after enrollment of the first participant and
concluded February16, 2015 after the last post-test questionnaire was completed (Hersch et al,
2016).
Research population
One hundred and seventeen nurses contacted the research team about interest in the study
from the participating hospitals. At the time of consent, two nurses opted not to participate and
ten nurses who sign consent never completed the pre-test questionnaire. One hundred and five
nurses completed the pre-test questionnaire, however, one participant withdrew after this point
leaving a total of 104 participants in the research study (Hersch et al, 2016).
The research population is nurses, from bedside, nurse managers, and advanced practice.
The inclusion criteria for participation in the study was a minimum age of 21, a registered nurse,
and employee of one of the six hospitals. The age range of participants was 22 to 65 years of age.

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Although there was nearly equal representation of age over the 43 years of age disparity with 53
participants under the age 42 and 51 participants over age 42 there are some age groups that are
very disproportionally represented between the control group and the experimental group. For
example, there was 15 participants' in the control group between the ages of 22 to 26 and only
seven in the experimental group in that same age range. With greater than double sample size in
that age group the data can present a bias due to the inadequate representation of stress related to
age (Hersch et al, 2016).
There was also disproportionate representation of female to males, with only 13 males
participating in the study and of those 13, only 4 were represented in the experimental group.