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Please submit your instrument design article critique AND a pdf copy of the article you chose

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Please submit your instrument design article critique AND a pdf copy of the article you chose. 

For this assignment, you may choose your own article to critique or select one of those peer reviewed materials I have posted on Canvas. Please choose a peer-reviewed article that focuses on cross-sectional study or its variants or a survey research and submit a pdf copy of the article with your critique. Please, DO NOT USE exploratory research articles (or other studies that applied qualitative techniques). Avoid this or similar qualitative articles completely.  You could use a trend or panel studies and longitudinal study designs (actually I will encourage to use the latter study technique).

NOTE: An article critique requires you to critically read a piece of research manuscript (here select a scholarly paper that applied cross-sectional study design or survey research and identify and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the published paper (according to the rubric guidelines and instructions detailed below). To do an excellent critique of any scholarly paper also suggest that you will need to read more about the topic to gain deeper insights of the discourse among scholars in the field. Please, read more about the topic of the critique before starting the actual critique of the assignment. 

Before you start writing, you will need to take some steps to get ready for your critique:

• Choose an article that meets the criteria outlined by your instructor (cross sectional study design or survey research from a peer-reviewed scholarly paper).
• Read the scholarly article to get an understanding of the main idea of the nature of the study design applied. Note: the published manuscript must be on cross sectional study design that applied specific theory or theories of public health importance or survey research (which normally focuses on a single variable vs. cross sectional study).
• Assess the descriptive analysis, and determine does the results reveal that was not purposely stated by the investigators.
• Examine relationships among variables and the major construct of the study (what are the significant theoretical factors related to a given health related outcome)?
• Read the article again with a critical eye, pointing out the inadequacies or what the investigators could have done to improve the quality of the manuscript on cross sectional study or survey research.

As you read, critically analyze the following:

• What about the article (on cross sectional study or survey) that make the paper so important for public health practice or research investigations? 
• The level of rigor-how was the construct assessed, sampling, statistical techniques and appropriateness?
• Note the research question, the hypothesis (ses), theoretical framework and determine if there is any disconnect among these?
• How about ethical issues and feasibility of access to the study population?
• What was the level of rigor in sampling, population, the scale or index used by the investigators, survey modality and statistical analysis?
• What does the results reveal that was not purposely stated by the investigators? 
• How does the paper make any significant contributions to public health practice or community health behaviors?
• Are the chosen constructs or the operational definition provided appropriate/adequate to answer the research question(s) on scale development or an index measure?
• Are there issues related to the generalizability of the results related to the construct (you can briefly discuss validity issues of cross sectional study designs-if warranted, but that is not the focus here)?
• What is underlying theory for this scale or index measure?
• Are the reliability measures for scales and validity typologies (for scale or index) appropriate and well validated? Detail any inconsistency here. Remember, validity related to study designs is different from validity of scale or index but both are linked).  
• Detail how the theory or the construct conflict or is consistent with other known theories or other constructs in public health?
• Data analysis, statistical technique applied and ability to infer causal interpretations warranted (i.e., did the investigators infer causal relationships instead of correlations about the variables--why or why not and note your detailed explanations)?
• The third variable problem (in cross sectional study or survey research)-Could the observed relationships be attributed to a third variable or an unknown factor that was not analyzed by investigators? Explain
• What about cohort effects (that could possibly explain the observed relationship)?
• If you are using panel/trend study or longitudinal study designs, you may want to examine differences in samples over time, how long they were followed, attrition of study subjects, appropriateness of the statistical tool in the analysis, limitations and if the underlying statistical assumptions were violated.

Then organize your analysis as follows (in addition to the above, apply the rubric guideline for this assignment to complete your analysis):

i. Introduction

ii. Summary

iii. Critique of the Analysis-cross sectional study using appropriate statistical tools or survey research

iv. Conclusion

Please, avoid copying or re-writing any section or sections of the critique paper directly from the peer-reviewed manuscript. All writings must be in your (owned) words and not directly quoted. All quotes (if necessary) must be paraphrased and the source or sources cited appropriately (in APA style of formatting). I do not accept direct quotes (just paraphrase and cite your source or sources).