Critique of Research Article Essay Essay

The purpose of this essay is to recognize specific aspects of the clinical nursing research paper done by Carlee Lehna and Jack McNeil. I will define and discuss these aspects. In clinical research articles there are literature reviews that give background information as to the problem and research that was performed in the study, and why this problem needed to be studied (Burnes & Grove, 2011). The literature review in this particular study explains to the reader about the contrast in health literacy of English speaking only parents and Spanish speaking only parents and what tools the researchers used to measure the parents’ health literacy of their child’s health care. The review was very thorough and understandable. The authors named a couple of different tools and how those tools measured literacy. They also explain why they chose the Test of Functional Health Literacy in Adults tool (TOFHLA), it was the only test that was available in English and Spanish. After reading another article there is another test called Newest Vital Sign. This test is also in English and Spanish takes less time and has only six questions. (Cornett, 2009). Using one test to measure their healt literacy is a limitation. The problem statement helps the reader identify the dilemma for the target population in the research and why it needs further exploration. Burns & McNeil discuss that the lower health literacy of the parents the poorer outcomes of their children (Lehna & McNeil, 2008). The purpose of this study is to measure the difference in health literacy in two groups of different language speaking parents, i. e. English and Spanish (Lehna & McNeil, 2008). The relationship between the problem statement and purpose statement is that the purpose statement is the how the authors are going to find the fix for the problem. The problem statement in this article very clear that the low health literacy is directly related to poor outcomes. The purpose statement is concise and easy to comprehend. In the Lehna & McNeil article, the word purpose is mentioned several times and it may make it harder for the reader to decipher the purpose statement, this is a limitation. Target population is a larger total sample group that meets a criteria (Burnes & Grove, 2011). Sample is the particular group that participated in the study (Burnes & Grove, 2011). The target group in this particular study meet the criteria of parents/caregivers that either only speak English or Spanish and that their children were treated at Shriners Hospital for Children in Galveston, Texas. The sample group is much smaller, they meet the criteria and participated in the tests, interviews and focus groups. These different ways that the researchers used to gather information is a strength. Two of the limitations with the sample is that they only studied parents from one hospital and the authors just specified the language as Spanish, there are many different dialects in those Spanish speaking countries that some information could be lost in translation. The five parts of the study were very easy to recognize. By dissecting this study it helped me identify and learn those 5 parts. I feel a bit more comfortable in reading research papers. This research study was very interesting because I can relate to the difficulty with trying to explain health issues with Spanish speaking families. References Burnes, N. , & Grove, S. K. (2011). Understanding Nursing Research: Building an Evidence-Based Practice (5th Ed. ). Maryland Heights, MO: Elsevier. Cornett, S. (2009, Sept 30). Assessing and Addressing Health Literacy. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 14. http://dx. doi. org/10. 3912/OJIN. Vol14No03Man02 Lehna, C. , & McNeil, J. (2008, April 2). Mixed-Method Exploration of Parents’ Health Understanding. Clinical Nursing Research, http://cnr. sagepub. com/