A case study is an in-depth analysis of a phenomenon, a person, a group of people, or an event. Parts of a journal article may vary depending on the journal. Generally, parts that should be included are title, author, abstract, introduction, review of literature, methodology/materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusions, acknowledgements, conflict of interests, references, abbreviations, tables, figures, and appendix. Some journals may not require an appendix section.
This article has a title, authors, background, methods, results discussion, strengths and limitations, future research, and references. The title is clear and gives sufficient information concerning the study. Below the title, all the authors/researchers are listed. Their affiliations are also indicated there. However, the authors’ affiliations are right intended.
The abstract is a comprehensive summary of all the components of an article. In the current article, this section is well-structured. It consists of such brief sections as background, objective, study design, methods, results, limitations and conclusions. It does not contain a discussion section. This may be attributed to the fact that journal articles have a strict word limit for abstracts. Normally, an abstract does not contain more than three hundred words.
A section called background follows the abstract. In this section, the authors have combined both introduction and review of literature sections. The introduction section is short. The focus is centered on the review of literature in this section. The authors did an extensive literature review on the topic under the study. However, previous research focused mainly on the effect of exercise and weight loss in people who had osteoarthritis of the knee joint.
The methods section describes the methods used to obtain information. The research was a prospective cohort study for which adults above 25 years had been recruited (Paans et al., 2013). It was carried out in Groningen (the Netherlands). The target population was adults who suffered from osteoarthritis and were either overweight or obese.
The selected subjects were to follow a diet and do exercises to lose weight. Both the individual and the group sessions were carried out. Individual sessions had lasted for three months followed by group sessions that took 5 months. Data was collected using questionnaires. Adults who had BMI greater than 40 were excluded.
Analyzed results are found in the results section of the article. They indicate that exercise and weight loss programs can benefit overweight and obese adults suffering from osteoarthritis. The participants reported an improvement, which amounts to 32.6% on their physical functions. They also reported a significant decline in perceived pain. The results show that weight loss and exercise can yield positive results over a long period of time.
The authors discussed the results in a precise manner. They compared their findings with those contained in the previous studies. They reported that pain relief attributed to the two programs was significant. Immediately after this section, strengths and limitations of the study were given.
Major limitations reported include a small sample size, lack of previous research, and methodology related limitations. The next sections are future research and conclusion. The authors recommended further research to confirm their findings. A random sample would suffice in future study. The article concludes that the result gained through the two programs is significant.
The article components were organized as follows: title, authors, background, methods, results, discussion, limitations, conclusion and reference. The case study acknowledges an organization that funded the research. It has a list of references, which contains all the cited materials.
Reference
Paans, N., van den Akker-Scheek, I., Dilling, R.G., Bos, M., van der Meer, K., Bulstra,S.K., & Stevens, M. (2013). Effect of Exercise and Weight Loss in People who have Hip Osteoarthritis and are Overweight or Obese: A Prospective Cohort Study. Physical Therapy, 93(2), 137-145. doi: 10.2522/ptj.20110418.