Essay HLSC122: Critical Appraisal of Research Study Examining Bacteria on Student’s Mobile Phones – Research Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Introduction 

There is a scarcity of research on the bacterial contamination of mobile phones of health care workers worldwide (Kent, Marsh, May & XI, 2020, p.5). This paper will critically appraise one of the few primary research studies on this subject (Tailor, Nikita, Naiker, Naivalu, & Kumar, 2019) using a set of questions to identify the strengths and weakness of key sections of the study, namely: authorship, research question, research design, research methods and lastly limitations and results. In addition, an outline enablers and barriers to the adoption of the study recommendations or findings in relation to a given scenario and clinical question. 

PART A – Critical appraisal Authorship 

White (2018) maintains that an appraisal of research literature should include an appraisal of the quality of authorship, which may include, “cited credentials, affiliations and known expertise in the health discipline on the research topic” (p.12). The authorship of the study being appraised in this paper (Tailor et al, 2019), comprised four authors who had a Bachelor of medical laboratory science, and one who was a qualified dentist, affiliated with universities. It can therefore be concluded that the authorship was a strength of this study, given cited credentials, qualifications and affiliations. However, a weakness of this study was the omission of a disclosure statement in the study, indicating that there was no ‘conflict of interest’. A conflict of interest is described by White (2018, p. 6) as a situation when there are commercial, legal, financial, or any other opposing interests that may affect the study.