Identify a topic of interest and undertake a literature search, detailing how you undertook the search.

Assessment Details

Learning Outcome Assessment method

Identify and appreciate the main sources of evidence relevant to health care, including qualitative and quantitative research and systematic reviews.
Apply principles of systematic enquiry to gather evidence.
Utilise a critiquing framework to assess the quality of healthcare evidence.
Identify an area of practice and demonstrate literature searching skills to seek research evidence relating to this topic.
Make judgements about the quality and applicability of evidence to identify ways to develop practice.
Assignment (3, 000 words)

Assignment title: RESEARCH CRITIQUE
Questions:
Identify a topic of interest and undertake a literature search, detailing how you undertook the search.
Identify and critique two research papers from your search, one that uses a quantitative approach and one that uses a qualitative approach.
Summarise your findings including the application to practice.
(3,000 words)

Student Guidance
The following structure is recommended:
Section Title Indicative Content Indicative Word Count
Introduction Outline the structure and content of the work.
Provide some rationale for choosing your subject and justify why the topic is important to nursing practice. *200
Literature search Here you need to precisely detail your search strategy:
⦁ Start by generating a literature search question. You should use a structure to help with this. A question will help to focus your search and make it easier to identify search terms.
⦁ Which databases did you use and why?

⦁ What key search terms did you use? How did you use them? How did you use Boolean Operators and truncation to improve your search? (see Assignment Guide 1 on Blackboard)
⦁ How many results did this yield?

⦁ How did you increase the specificity of your search using filters? You may consider tabulating some of this section. *600
Selection of literature In this section:
⦁ You need to outline how you selected the two research papers to review from those you identified in the search.
⦁ You are required to identify one quantitative and one qualitative paper. You need to justify your choice.
⦁ Please see Assignment Guide 1 on Blackboard. Consider enhancing this section with a diagrammatic representation of your selection procedure. *200
Critique In this section you need to critique the two research papers that you have selected.
The papers should be critiqued separately and in a sequential way (please see Assignment Guide 2).
You should use an appropriate framework to guide this process.
The focus here is on your ability to critique research literature.
You should utilise a variety of views (research literature) to develop your arguments and critical writing. *1600
Discussion Compare the critiqued papers.
Discuss the strengths and limitations of both research papers and their associated research paradigms (i.e. quantitative and qualitative).
Summarise your critique – what does this research tell you about your topic/research question. Where are the gaps? To what extent do they provide an answer to your literature search question?
Discuss what the findings contribute to current nursing practice in the UK. *300
Conclusion Make conclusions about the assignment process as a whole. Do not introduce new material but tie all of the preceding sections together. *100
References Follow the Harvard referencing style. Ensure that you include a sufficient number of references to demonstrate level 5 writing.
Appendices Optional- if you require one