Research Article Review
Article 1. Magnetic Resonance Imaging-Ultrasound Fusion Targeted Prostate Biopsy in a Consecutive Cohort of Men with No Previous Biopsy: Reduction of Over Detection through Improved Risk Stratification
Article 2. Comparison of MR/Ultrasound Fusion-Guided Biopsy With Ultrasound-Guided Biopsy for the Diagnosis of Prostate Cancer
Article citation:
1. Introduction
a. Briefly describe the topic and goals of the research
b. Is the past research summarized in a way that conveys the need for the current study? Summarize the most pertinent past research.
c. What additional information was the present experiment supposed to add to the field?
d. State the study's hypothesis or hypotheses. If there is no explicitly stated hypothesis, what is the research question or the intention of the study?
e. How will the current study change or add to our understanding of the area being investigated?
f. Are there any gaps in the logic of the development of the hypotheses and research questions? If so, what?
2. Methods
a. Who were the participants? Were the inclusionary and exclusionary criteria on which they were selected appropriate and adequate?
b. What experimental groups were included in the study and did they adequately test the research question?
c. What was the setting of the study?
d. Identify the type of design used and summarize the design.
e. List all of the variables. Indicate how they were operationally defined.
i. If correlational, indicate which variables were to be associated with one another
ii. If experimental, indicate which variables were independent and dependent
iii. If not a or b, indicate which variables were investigated
f. Were the research participants randomly assigned to conditions?
g. Did the study have the necessary control or comparison groups to eliminate the influence of confounding extraneous variables?
h. Were there any attempts to control for biases that may arise from experimenter expectancies or research participant perceptions?
i. Did the operationalization of the independent and dependent variables seem to have captured the construct being investigated and the construct being measured?
3. Confounds and Ethical Issues
a. Indicate whether or not there were any biases present in the selection of participants. If so, how could they have been avoided?
b. Indicate whether or not there were any biases present during the running of the study (consider experimental bias, participant bias etc).
c. Consider the guidelines of the American Psychological Association. Were the participants at any risk? If so, what safeguards did the researcher institute into the study?
d. Did the experimenters obtain the participants' consent to participate? If so, was it adequate?
e. Did you find any ethical issues that were not addressed adequately? If so, describe why you do not think they are adequate and how you would address them.
4. Results
a. Were any descriptive statistics used? Which ones? What do they tell you? Are they adequate?
b. Were any inferential statistics used? Which ones? What do they tell you? Are they adequate?
c. Are the data clearly presented? Evaluate not only the text but also the figures and tables.
d. Explain how the results supported or did not support the hypotheses.
e. How large was the sample size? Was the sample size large enough to detect an effect, or was it so large that even a very small effect would be statistically significant, but not practically significant?
f. Were the data analyzed several different ways and was the rationale for conducting several different data analyses appropriate?
g. Did you find any potential biases in how the analyses were done or reported? If so, what?
h. Can the results be generalized to other populations and other situations?
5. Discussion
a. What major conclusions do the authors draw?
b. Do the results provide support for the hypothesis and have they provided an answer to the research question(s) posed?
c. Have the findings of the study been related to prior research and the theoretical framework from which they have began?
d. Do the conclusions follow logically from the results? Are there any unwarranted hidden assumptions of causality?
e. Do the authors suggest any theoretical implications? If so, what? Discuss briefly whether or not you agree with their theoretical interpretations.
f. Do the authors suggest any practical implications? If so, what?
g. Have the authors discussed possible artifacts of their data? Do you think this experiment was well executed? If not, what were some of the flaws? How might you overcome these flaws in future research?
h. To what populations or settings would you be willing to extend or generalize the conclusions?
i. What future research do the authors suggest?
6. References
a. Are there adequate references to the work of others?
b. Are any key references missing?
c. Have the authors cited mainly other research articles or is the reference section heavily based on review articles and book chapters?
7. Final comments (include any additional comments you might have about this article).
Attachment:- Article.rar