Read the integrative research review article by Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk (2012) “Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research”. Then complete a three to four page analysis and critique paper, 750 words. In this critique you will complete both the Synopsis and Credibility components from pages 393-396 of your textbook, Appendix D: “Completed Appraisal of Conclusions of an Integrative Research Review” .
Title your page with the following heading:
Citation: Militello, L.K., Kelly, S.A., & Melnyk, B. M. (2012). Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 9 (2), 66-77. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-6787.2011.00239.x.
Synopsis
1. What topic or question did the integrative research review address?
2. How were potential individual research reports identified?
3. What determined if a study was included in the analysis?
4. How many studies were included in the review?
5. What research designs were used in the selected research studies?
6. What were the consistent and important across-studies conclusions?
Credibility
7. Was the topic clearly defined?
8. Is there a description of the methods used to conduct the review?
9. Was the search for study reports comprehensive and unbiased?
10. Were the studies included in the review assessed for quality?
11. Were the design characteristics and the findings of the studies displayed or discussed in sufficient detail?
12. Was there truly an integration (synthesis) of findings – not merely reporting of findings from each study?
13. If different findings were found between studies, did the reviewers explore why differences in findings might have occurred?
14. Did the reviewers distinguish between conclusions based on consistent findings from a sufficient number of studies and those based on inferior evidence?
15. Which conclusions were supported by consistent findings from two or more studies?
16. Are the conclusions credible?
Conclusion: Conclude the paper with your thoughts about using integrative research reviews to find evidence about clinical practice problems. Is this approach a practice that you could use in your own clinical practice setting?
Solution 1
Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research by Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk
Synopsis
Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk (2012) review evidence to determine the effectiveness of using text messaging as a platform of promoting healthy lifestyle behavior measures/programs among pediatric and adolescent populations. The authors base their research on the concern of increasing unhealthy lifestyle behaviors and the increasingly rising mobile phone use in the society, identifying the technology as an important platform that can be used for the promotion of wellness and the reduction of health disparities. Additionally, the authors sought to identify the implication of promoting the intervention programs on clinical practice and research. To achieve success in the study, the authors apply a comprehensive methodology including different studies identified through credible databases and by hand-searching biographies. They used eight of the thirty-seven articles identified from the comprehensive search in the research review. These were chosen upon a critical analysis and determination of their credibility and comprehensiveness in covering different aspects. The articles used in the review described the different aspects of the outcomes from a single study. The articles’ asserted that there is a significant difference between age groups on healthy lifestyle behaviors and that mobile phone technology can be utilized in bridging the gaps in health disparities by promoting efficient intervention measures.
Reference
Militello, L. K., Kelly, S. A., & Melnyk, B. M. (2012). Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing 9 (2), 66-77.
Solution 2
Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research by Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk
Synopsis
The integrative research review addressed the use of text-message interventions to promote positive health behavior. The authors identified the importance of the topic given the various gaps that the society is faced with in terms of health care practices due to lack of diversity in the methods through which individuals can access health support. This topic was aimed at exploring the effectiveness of text messaging as a health care intervention among adolescents. In search of the most appropriate articles to include in the review, both authors engaged in a comprehensive search for literature on online databases including PubMed, MEDLINE, Google Scholar, PsycINFO, and Cochrane Library among others (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). The authors were assisted by the research Librarian in search for the articles. The authors selected distinctive search terms including texting, adolescent, health behavior, preventive health services, and lifestyle, among others to generate results that were reflective of the topic. The authors limited the age of the participants of all the studies to 18 years as this was within their scope of definition of adolescents.
The authors applied various factors to establish the inclusion and exclusion criteria, based on which they decided which of the researches to include in the review or not. One of the most important factors that determined inclusion of the articles into the study was the applied study design, whereby only the studies that applied quasi-experiment or controlled trial study approaches were included (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). Another criterion that was applied involved the age of the participants of the study being exclusively less than or equal to eighteen, with their parents also included. In addition, only the experimental researches that had been published in peer-reviewed journals between the year 2004 and 15th May 2015 were included in the review (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). As a result of the comprehensive search on the online databases, the authors were able to identify thirty-seven articles. Nevertheless, only seven studies, represented by eight articles met the inclusion criteria and were included in the study. It is important to note that two of the included articles represented the same study. The shared conclusion across the studies was that text-messages form an effective way through which positive health behavior can be promoted among adolescents.
Credibility
The topic was clearly defined with the authors addressing the significance of the study in the contemporary technology dominated society. The authors clearly highlighted the methods used in the study including a search of online databases for articles on the topic, which were reviewed. They also identified an inclusion criteria based on which they sieved their findings and came up with eight articles to review. The search for reports was comprehensive as the authors used different online databases and combined different keywords to obtain a variety of articles that were measured against the criteria. In assessing the quality of the articles used in the review, the authors applied the Downs and Black (1998) methodological checklist, from which 12 items were selected and used as criteria for measuring quality (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). The Downs and Black checklist comprises of 27 items which provide a framework upon which the quality of studies can be measured. The rest of the items were removed from the original checklist. The researchers displayed both the strengths and weaknesses of the employed study design, which allow for the understanding of the actual scope of the study and some of the factor that may have hampered the credibility of the review. On the other hand, the authors were keen to discuss the findings from the reviewed articles in detail, especially in terms of the methods of research that they applied and their findings. The authors synthesized the findings and integrated them in order to determine their similarities and differences in view of developing a single conclusive statement towards the subject of study.
Various differences were noted in the studies including the rate of response to the text messages that the participants received among other differences. Nevertheless, the authors adequately addressed the sources of such differences, including the variations in the number of groups that were used in the studies and the intervention approaches that were employed. Nevertheless, the reviewers failed to distinguish between conclusions that were based on superior evidence and those that relied on inferior evidence. The findings from three of the studies including (Franklin et al. 2006) Miloh et al. (2009), and Hanauer et al. (2009) showed consistency towards the conclusion that the use of text messages to remind individuals to check their blood glucose levels as well as their insulin therapy fosters improvements in terms of clinical and behavior outcomes (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). These conclusions are credible considering the fact that they were as a result of three different studies that were conducted by competitive scholars, and reviewed by other scholars. In addition, the findings of the studies were based on primary data, which was collected by the authors of the researches.
Conclusion
Integrative research reviews prove to be one of the
most effective way through which a researcher and practitioners aiming at using
evidence-based studies in their practice can gather information without
engaging in primary studies. Proper evaluation of the quality of studies that have
already been conducted and effectively comparing three findings in order to determine
coherence and consistence in findings allows one to come up with a conclusion
that can be incorporated into practice. This is a method that I could apply in
my own research as it is a combination of the primary data of various
researchers, increasing the accuracy of their shared conclusions.
Reference
Militello, L., Kelly, S., & Melnyk, B. M. (2012). Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 9(2), 66-77.
Solution 3
Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research by Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk
Synopsis
The topic addressed by the review involves employing text-message interventions to promote healthy behavior. The topic has been well elaborated in the introduction part with each element within it defined, ranging from text-messages, to good health behavior. The authors carried pout a comprehensive online database search and a bibliography hand-search, through which they were able to come up with the most appropriate articles to include in the review. The online databases from which the studies were searched include PsycINFO, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library, PubMed, and Google Scholar (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). A combination of certain search terms was used to generate search results that are relevant to the research topic. These search terms included texting, lifestyle, adolescent, health behavior, preventive, health promotion, health services, text message, intervention, text messaging, short message service, cellular phone, health promotion, obesity, and healthy lifestyle behaviors (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012).
An inclusion and exclusion criteria was used to determine which studies were to be included in the review or not. One criterion applied was the inclusion of studies that involved participants of the age eighteen or below only (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). On the other hand, the utilized research design was considered as only those researches that had applied quasi-experiment and controlled trail designs were included in the review. All the studies that were included in the research were supposed to have been published ion peer- reviewed research journals. The dates of publication were narrowed to 2004 to 15th May 2015. Thirty-seven articles were identified across the databases as a result of the comprehensive research, out of which only seven studies were identified to have met the criteria and hence suitable to be included in the review (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). The seven studies were published in eight articles, with two of the articles publishing the same study. The conclusion shared across the studies was that the use of text-messages as an intervention in health care was effective in promoting good health behavior such as compliance with medication regimes and good health seeking behavior, among others.
Credibility
The background and aims sections of the article clearly provide an in-depth description of the topic, with all the aspects of the topic being put into consideration. The methods used in the study were also clearly addressed in the article by the authors, hence promoting the credibility of the study since the methods have been explained in a way that the experiment can be repeated by a whole different individual. This method involved searching for articles on identified online databases using defined criteria that allowed for sorting out of the articles and only including those articles that are highly responsive to the topic in the review. The inclusion criteria allowed for the identification of eight articles representing seven studies as most appropriate to be included in the study (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). The article research was comprehensive considering the fact that the authors considered various databases from which the articles were searched, and different combinations of search terms were employed, widening the scope of the articles. Criteria responsive to the study subject were later used to sieve the articles and to come up with the most appropriate articles. The authors also included an assessment of the quality of the articles using the Downs and Black methodological checklist, which is made up of 27 assessment items (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). Out of the 27 items, the authors identified 12 items as most appropriate to the study, with the rest of the items excluded from the checklist.
The characteristics of the different study designs included in the review were analyzed in detail considering their importance in influencing the findings, with the findings also analyzed as compared to each other. The review involved not only mentioning the findings of each of the articles included, but comparison and contrasting of the studies and integration of the findings in view of coming up with a shared finding. Various differences were identified between the studies with the authors going into detail top explain the causes of the observed discrepancies, which ranged from the differences in the methods applied among other factors such as including caregivers in some of the interventions while others lacking such inclusions. The authors also distinguished the findings that were consistent across the studies and those that could be deemed as less accurate due to the employment of weak evidence. Three of the studies, including Hanauer et al. (2009), Milioh et al. (2009), and Franklin et al. (2006) shared findings whereby they consistently concluded that clinical and behavior outcomes were positively influenced by the use of text-message interventions including text-message reminders for individuals to check their blood sugar levels or to observe their insulin therapy (Militello, Kelly, & Melnyk, 2012). The credibility of these conclusions is justified by the fact that they were obtained as a result of primary research of evidence, based on which the conclusions were established.
Conclusion
It is evident that through the article review
Militello, Kelly, and Melnyk were able to determine that text messages could be
used to improve health behavior among adolescents. This approach to research
proves to be highly effective as it involves a review of the different
perspectives developed on the same subject and finding of a focal point at
which all the studies meet. Such a point could be adopted as an accurate conclusion.
Unlike individual researches, whereby one may make methodological or data
analysis mistakes and interfere with the credibility of the findings, study
reviews allow for identification of the various methods and study designs that
contribute to the accuracy of the findings and the ruling out of studies that
may be deemed to have used inappropriate methodological approaches. As such,
this is an approach that I would apply in researches.
Reference
Militello, L., Kelly, S., & Melnyk, B. M. (2012). Systematic Review of Text-Messaging Interventions to Promote Healthy Behaviors in Pediatric and Adolescent Populations: Implications for Clinical Practice and Research. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 9(2), 66-77.