Title Appeal and Author Order
The title of the article by Hsiao et al. (2019) was appealing to me because it addressed a research question on an issue that has had ethical and legal implications in practice. Thus, studying it is essential in reducing such implications in nursing practice. The article drew my attention because it centered its findings on core principles of family-centered care, an area of study that stipulates nurses’ roles and responsibilities. However, what made me want to read it more is that the article connects mental health issues with family-centered care.
The names of the authors of the article were alphabetically written, starting with Chiu-Yueh, then Huei-Lan, and finally Yun-Fang.
Abstract Evaluation
The abstract in the article by Hsiao et al. (2019) was present and captured critical concepts of the research. The study’s fundamental concepts included the study’s purpose, “to examine the quality of family-centered care perceived by primary family caregivers and its influencing factors in mental healthcare practice.” The abstract also included such critical concepts as nurses’ attitudes toward the importance of families in nursing care. Another key concept was the nurse’s attitudes toward schizophrenia, primary family caregiver, quality of family-centered care, and schizophrenia as a mental health illness to connect the disease and the provision of family-centered care.
The article has a simple and concise summary of the research problem. The problem is summarized as family involvement in care planning, which is plagued with difficulties of limited family nursing knowledge and abilities among healthcare practitioners, as well as ethical dilemmas regarding confidentiality. The study method was also summarized as it was delivered to the population: 121 mental health nurses and 164 primary family caregivers of patients with schizophrenia.
The article also summarized the use of a structured questionnaire without giving a detailed content analysis. Moreover, the abstract listed the methods used in data analysis, which included one-way analysis of variance, descriptive statistics, Pearson’s product-moment correlations, independent t-test, and stepwise regression analyses. In the findings, the abstract summarized nurses’ attitudes toward schizophrenia patients.
Report Detail and Critique Potential
The article included an adequate amount of detail concerning the study’s purpose, conceptual framework, design, methods, handling of ethical issues, analysis of data, and interpretation. For instance, the researchers provided the study’s primary purpose at the beginning of the article, which could be used to draw a reader’s attention to the article. The study also delivered a clear conceptual framework, which included variables that looked into the relationship between perceptions or attitudes of nursing caregivers and the utilization of family-centered care in treating schizophrenia.
Hsiao et al. (2019) employed a descriptive and correlational design in their methodology, with well-structured sampling, procedure, and measurements. Ethical approval was considered, whereby institutional review boards from three mental institutions gave authority to conduct the research. The data analyses in the research by Hsiao et al. (2019) were robust as they used SPSS software, version 20. Furthermore, before the analyses, the dataset was cleaned using kurtosis, skewness, Q-Q plot, and Kolmogorov-Smirnov to ascertain that the normal distribution was attained. As such, the interpretation of data was structured into the data analysis formulas.
Writing Quality
The report contained some minor grammatical mistakes. For example, “…the importance of families in nursing care were related to poor aspects of quality of FCC,” which appears in the conclusion, should actually read “…the importance of families in nursing care were related to poor quality of FCC” (Hsiao et al., 2019, p. 686). The phrase “aspect of” makes the sentence look wordy without contributing important information. Such words are known as empty fillers; to sound concise, the fillers should be removed.
Moreover, in the first sentence of the conclusion, the singular verb “was” does not appear to agree with the plural subject, “primary family caregivers’ perceptions of the quality of FCC in the presence of schizophrenia” (Hsiao et al., 2019, p. 686). Thus, the subject-verb agreement was missing, as the correct word should be “were.” However, the article employed simple and precise words that were understandable even to a reader with no knowledge of nursing concepts.
Organization and Logic
The report was well organized as per the standard scientific and nursing journal. The presentation of ideas was orderly and logical, starting with an introduction to the topic, followed by a methodology, a concise literature review on the subject matter, data analyses, results, discussions, limitations, a conclusion, and finally, acknowledgments.
Use of Figures and Tables
The authors in the article by Hsiao et al. (2019) employed the use of tables to enhance the reader’s capacity to scan through the work without undergoing the long process of sifting through the text for accurate results. For instance, such tables as S1, S2, S3, and S4 arrange too extensive or complex data to be fully presented in the text, enabling the reader to see the findings promptly. They may be used to show trends or patterns in the data and improve the work’s readability by eliminating numerical information from the text. However, the researchers did not use figures as they were deemed unnecessary.
Bias, Objectivity, and Gender-Inclusive Language
In the methodology, the research article contained overt biases, exaggerations, and distortions. For instance, Hsiao et al. (2019) used a non-randomized control design; thus, the generalizability of the results warrants caution. Furthermore, the use of a small sample size of 121 mental health nurses and 164 primary family caregivers reduces the generalizability of the results and findings based on a larger population size. Furthermore, sexist language, which is unwarranted linguistic treatment towards a group or a person, primarily women, but sometimes men, was not used in the research.
Reference
Hsiao, C. Y., Lu, H. L., & Tsai, Y. F. (2019). Factors associated with primary family caregivers’ perceptions on quality of family‐centered care in mental health practice. Journal of Nursing Scholarship, 51(6), 680-688. Web.