How to Write Article Critique: Review Of Original Article

Article critique definition: one of the main article types that every student is face with. The editorial board and the editorial committee will promote the critical reading of articles, preferably of recent publication.

We propose the following article critique example as a guide to make a correct presentation of this kind of paper. Remember that it is only a guide to help you in the realization of a scientific dissemination document, although we honestly believe that it is a good way of doing things.

1. Title of the article. Subtitle

It must be the title of your own manuscript, it must be original (do not repeat the same title of the article on which you are doing the critical reading). It must have a meaning and be related, obviously, to the topic you are going to deal with

2. Summary

Fundamental part of the writing article critique assignment (maximum 250 words). It is important to include in this summary the fundamental pillars that should have the critical reading of an article as well as we do while writing open thesis statement. Remember that it is a summary or abstract that will be collected by academic seekers, so it will be your letter of introduction to the world. The summary should include it in the manuscript itself and in the final process of uploading to the OJS system (Open Journal System) when it asks for it together with the metadata (name of the authors, affiliation …)

3. Introduction

Brief explanation of the problem faced by the article is a main feature article critique format.

4. Description of the Article

• A good way to start is to assign a score on the Jadad Scale, if it is a clinical trial.
• Describe the Type of design; cohorts, control cases, randomized clinical trial … etc
• General description of the intervention (experimental studies). What has been done and how it has been done.
• Define the most relevant variables to understand the work. What data was collected?
• Define inclusion criteria and exclusion criteria
• Defines the statistical tests used and the statistical program.
• Describe the results obtained. You must provide the main results in sufficient detail to be understood by the reader. You can use tables and figures (always referenced) but it is important to focus on the most relevant aspects.
• Describe the conclusions of the work and the authors

5. Critical analysis of the article:

Do not kid yourself; this is the body of the article critique rubric, the same as in reflective essay,the most interesting part. In short, you must develop what is stated in the summary (internal and external validity and the importance or applicability of the article). To help you in this we offer you a series of key questions that you should answer to make a good scientific review of a publication. It is not necessary that you answer all, but surely, they will help you to order a good scientific review.

• Is the study oriented to a clearly defined question?
• Analyze the study population
• Were the groups similar at the beginning of the study?
• Is there a selection bias that could compromise the generalization of the findings?
• Make a list of the factors that you think are important and that the authors have omitted (genetic, environmental, and socioeconomic).
• Apart from the intervention under study, the groups were treated in the same way?
• How was the assignment of patients to the groups; was it randomized, masked?
• How did the authors measure results?
• Did the authors use objective or subjective variables?
• Do the variables adequately reflect what they are supposed to measure? (they have been validated)
• Was the measurement methods similar in the groups studied?
• Are the results obtained worth?
• Is the effect of the treatment great?
• What are your confidence intervals?
• Do you believe the results? Can it be due to chance, bias or confusion? Are the design and methods of this study defective enough to make the results unlikely?
• Do you think that the patients included in the trial are sufficiently similar to your patients?
• If not, in what does that affect the decision to be made?
• Can you apply the results to your environment? Consider whether the patients covered by the study may be sufficiently different from those in your area. Can you estimate the benefits and harms in your environment?
• Do the results of this study coincide with other available evidence?
• Do the benefits to obtain justify the risks and costs? It is unlikely that it can be inferred from the trial but, what do you think about it?

6. Conclusion

Here, again, express your opinions in line with article critique outline. You must be yourself, educated but not afraid to proclaim your conclusions. Do you believe in the results? Do not be afraid to create a healthy polemic.

Summary of the article critique activity

The spectacular increase in the amount of scientific information circulating, the difficulties in accessing it, the problems of understanding and critical analysis of scientific information and the scarcity of time for reading articles are making it difficult to disseminate the scientific knowledge of nurses. With the appearance of a new type of scientific article, the critical review (CR) or critical commentary of a study, also called structured and commented summary, some of these problems have been solved, since this type of article selects relevant researches carried out anywhere in the world, overcomes language barriers and critically analyzes the information, making it available to nurses in a summarized and extracted form.

In this work we intend to provide the reader with the necessary help to develop a CR, trying to define the characteristics that must be presented, especially the freest part, that of the comment, so that it has a minimum of quality elements, as well as the structure of the informative summary, which will be included in the databases for their indexing.

Thus, we distinguish the parts that make up a CR, which are: pre-elimination part (composed of title, informative summary, necessary for the information to be indexed in the databases, keywords, the question of nursing based on the evidence ( EBE) and the selection of the article), structured summary (which is composed of study design, place of performance, objectives, methods, main results and conclusions) and critical comment (composed of an introduction to the problem, validity of the study, relevance of the work and closing with answer to the question of type EBE).