Discussion: Observational Study Designs
Walden University Discussion: Observational Study Designs-Step-By-Step Guide
This guide will demonstrate how to complete the Walden University Discussion: Observational Study Designs assignment based on general principles of academic writing. Here, we will show you the A, B, Cs of completing an academic paper, irrespective of the instructions. After guiding you through what to do, the guide will leave one or two sample essays at the end to highlight the various sections discussed below.
How to Research and Prepare for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
Whether one passes or fails an academic assignment such as the Walden University Discussion: Observational Study Designs depends on the preparation done beforehand. The first thing to do once you receive an assignment is to quickly skim through the requirements. Once that is done, start going through the instructions one by one to clearly understand what the instructor wants. The most important thing here is to understand the required format—whether it is APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.
After understanding the requirements of the paper, the next phase is to gather relevant materials. The first place to start the research process is the weekly resources. Go through the resources provided in the instructions to determine which ones fit the assignment. After reviewing the provided resources, use the university library to search for additional resources. After gathering sufficient and necessary resources, you are now ready to start drafting your paper.
How to Write the Introduction for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
The introduction for the Walden University Discussion: Observational Study Designs is where you tell the instructor what your paper will encompass. In three to four statements, highlight the important points that will form the basis of your paper. Here, you can include statistics to show the importance of the topic you will be discussing. At the end of the introduction, write a clear purpose statement outlining what exactly will be contained in the paper. This statement will start with “The purpose of this paper…” and then proceed to outline the various sections of the instructions.
How to Write the Body for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
After the introduction, move into the main part of the Discussion: Observational Study Designs assignment, which is the body. Given that the paper you will be writing is not experimental, the way you organize the headings and subheadings of your paper is critically important. In some cases, you might have to use more subheadings to properly organize the assignment. The organization will depend on the rubric provided. Carefully examine the rubric, as it will contain all the detailed requirements of the assignment. Sometimes, the rubric will have information that the normal instructions lack.
Another important factor to consider at this point is how to do citations. In-text citations are fundamental as they support the arguments and points you make in the paper. At this point, the resources gathered at the beginning will come in handy. Integrating the ideas of the authors with your own will ensure that you produce a comprehensive paper. Also, follow the given citation format. In most cases, APA 7 is the preferred format for nursing assignments.
How to Write the Conclusion for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
After completing the main sections, write the conclusion of your paper. The conclusion is a summary of the main points you made in your paper. However, you need to rewrite the points and not simply copy and paste them. By restating the points from each subheading, you will provide a nuanced overview of the assignment to the reader.
How to Format the References List for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
The very last part of your paper involves listing the sources used in your paper. These sources should be listed in alphabetical order and double-spaced. Additionally, use a hanging indent for each source that appears in this list. Lastly, only the sources cited within the body of the paper should appear here.
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Sample Answer for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
Analytic Epidemiological Designs: Observational
An observational study is one of the first steps in epidemiology for establishing a link between exposure and a result. Cohort studies typically follow large groups of people throughout time, both retrospectively or prospectively establishing a cohort and looking ahead. Clinical trials cannot give crucial descriptive data and information on long-term efficacy and safety, but observational studies may, and at a lower cost. Case reports and case series, ecological studies, cross-sectional studies, case-control studies, and cohort studies are all examples of this type of research. Participants in observational studies are those who are not subjected to any forced changes in their circumstances, i.e., they are not subjected to any intervention. Observational studies aim to explore the ‘natural’ condition of risk factors, diseases, or outcomes, despite the fact that participants’ behavior may change while they are being observed. Those that are sick, who have a disease, are often compared to people who aren’t sick, who don’t have the disease, in analytic investigations (McGrath et al., 2010).
Risk Factor and Health Outcome
The usage of Cannabis in relation to psychosis is the risk factor and health result covered in this discussion. In young people, cannabis usage is linked to psychosis-related consequences. According to some studies, at the 21-year follow-up, cannabis usage and three psychosis-related outcomes were examined; including non-affective psychosis, hallucinations, and the Peters et al Delusions Inventory score (Sarvet et al., 2018). The use of sibling pairs minimizes the chance that unmeasured confounding is to blame for the results. This study adds to the growing body of evidence that early cannabis usage in young adults is a the risk-modifying factor for psychosis-related outcomes (Sarvet et al., 2018)
Observational Design, strength and Limitation
In relation to design, sibling pair analysis nested within a prospective birth cohort was involved. At the 21-year follow-up, cannabis usage and three psychosis-related outcomes were examined. At the 14-year follow-up, associations between time since first cannabis use and psychosis-related outcomes were investigated using logistic regression adjusted for sex, age, parental mental illness, and hallucinations. With general linear modeling, the relationship between within-pair differences in duration since initial cannabis use and Peters et al Delusions Inventory score was investigated in 228 sibling pairs. (Sarvet et al., 2018). Nevertheless, there are worries that the link could be due to methodological limitations or unmeasured residual confounding. The inclusion of sibling pairings also minimizes the chance that unmeasured confounding could create a bias or result in questionable results. Another aspect of limitation is that all cohort members couldn’t receive the CIDI, due to insufficient funding (Najman, & Williams, 2010).
Improving Population Health
Self-medication should be screened for among youths presenting with mood/anxiety disorder, and gold standard concurrent therapy should be provided to address both the self-medication behavior and the mood/anxiety problem at the same time. Also, therapies such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which focuses on fostering self-acceptance while acknowledging the need to change, should be incorporated in their treatment plan. Improving health outcomes with better patient understanding and education is key. It is better to catch them young to prevent kids from growing up with bad habits with bad health outcome
An expanded role for educated consumers interacting with responsive health care teams is a major component of health care reform to support the people. Individuals especially the youths must, however, be highly engaged in order to reap the benefits of health
education. The gap between expectations and actual performance of behaviors related to health care and prevention has been documented in population studies. Improvement in self-efficacy, an important component of self-management, has been the most constant positive consequence of interventions to promote self-care. Although the focus has tended to be on short-term outcomes rather than long-term impacts, most studies of self-management programs have found gains in patient satisfaction, coping abilities, and feelings of social support. A review of the social determinants of health is beyond the scope of this review, as there are several factors that influence behavior. Parents and school teachers should pay attention to the behavior of students and be able to identify negative changes and when to refer kids to therapists or psychologists (Adams, 2010)
References
Sarvet, A. L., Wall, M. M., Keyes, K. M., Olfson, M., Cerdá, M., & Hasin, D. S. (2018). Self-medication of mood and anxiety disorders with marijuana: Higher in states with medical marijuana laws. Drug and alcohol dependence, 186, 10–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2018.01.009
McGrath, J., Welham, J., Scott, J., Varghese, D., Degenhardt, L., Hayatbakhsh, M. R., … & Najman, J. M. (2010). Association between cannabis use and psychosis-related outcomes using sibling pair analysis in a cohort of young adults. Archives of general psychiatry, 67(5), 440-447.
Najman, J., & Williams, G. (2010). Association Between Cannabis Use and Psychosis-Related Outcomes Using Sibling Pair Analysis in a Cohort of Young… Arch Gen Psychiatry, 67(5).
Adams, R. J. (2010). Improving health outcomes with better patient understanding and education. Risk management and healthcare policy, 3, 61
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Sample Answer 2 for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
Childhood obesity is a growing international health problem affecting over one third of United States’ school-aged children (Wang et al., 2021). School-based programs, such as not offering sugar-based beverages are popular, as well as activity programs (Wang et al., 2021). The strongest motivator for obese children has been shown to be empowerment (Wang et al., 2021). Empowerment-based health interventions help the child make healthier decisions (Wang et al., 2021). Childhood obesity can lead to adult obesity along with comorbidities (Krupsky et al., 2021). Alleviating childhood obesity will help create healthier adults.
Wang et al., 2021, utilized Empowerment Theory for youths ages 9-12 to allow them to make healthier, conscious decisions. Three components or processes were used: intrapersonal, interactional and behavioral (Wang et al., 2021). By empowering the youths to make conscious decisions against drinking sugar-based drinks, their intake of water improved and healthier choices were made (Wang et al., 2021).
Observational Study Design
Observation study designs are rather simple to apply and take into account time, person or place (Friis & Sellers, 2021). The designs differ in six areas: number of observations made, directionality of exposure, data collection methods, timing of data collection, unit of observation, and availability of subjects (Friis & Sellers, 2021). Selecting the appropriate design starts with a good question to answer. Research into causes of disease often rely on cross-sectional studies and often indicate what is achieved (Elm et al., 2007).
I would like to ask the question: Do parents of children ages 9-12, understand healthy food choices, such as no sugar-based drinks? A descriptive, cross-sectional survey would be used with the survey being sent home to the parents of children that fall within the range of 9-12 years of age. The survey would be retrospective, asking how many sugar-based drinks their child intakes vs how many water beverages the child intakes. A 2×2 table could be used to determine disease status vs. exposure status and help to build the survey (Friis & Sellers, 2021).
Strength & Limitations
Strengths of the study would be that the questions would be clearly asked with categories of the amount or number of sugar-based drinks vs water. The child’s weight would be asked. This would allow the results to be broken down into person. STROBE guidelines could also be used to be sure the study is inclusive of important variables and information (Von Elm et al., 2007).
On weakness is that some parents will not complete the survey and return it. Another is that you are relying on the parent’s recollection of data, and not the child’s direct answers. Reliance on accurate data would be crucial.
Improvement in Population Health
Understanding availability of unhealthy food choices would allow opportunity to possibly provide educational sessions to the children’ parents. One could also be sure that the school is offering healthy beverage choices.
References
Friis, R. H., & Sellers, T. (2021). Epidemiology for public health practice (6th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC.
Krupsky, K. L., Parrott, A., Andridge, R., Zvara, B. J., Keim, S. A., & Anderson, S. E. (2021). A mixed methods analysis of environmental and household chaos: Considerations for early-childhood obesity research. BMC Public Health, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11936-w
Von Elm, E., Altman, D. G., Egger, M., Pocock, S. J., Gøtzsche, P. C., & Vandenbroucke, J. P. (2007). The strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (strobe) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies. Annals of Internal Medicine, 147(8), 573–577.
Wang, M. L., Sprague Martinez, L. S., Weinberg, J., Alatorre, S., Lemon, S. C., & Rosal, M. C. (2021). A youth empowerment intervention to prevent childhood obesity: Design and methods for a cluster randomized trial of the h2go! program. BMC Public Health, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-021-11660-5
Sample Answer 3 for Discussion: Observational Study Designs
Observational studies are designs used to examine the causation between the exposure and outcome relationships. The data obtained from observational studies inform preventive methods implemented in healthcare (Barría, 2018). An example of a risk factor and health outcome that is selected in this discussion is obesity and lack of physical activity and unhealthy diets among the school-going children in the community. It is postulated that the lack of engagement in adequate physical activity and intake of unhealthy diets has been contributing to a rise in the rate of obesity among school going children in the community. The existence of causation between the factors and its effect on the outcome can be examined using an observational study.
The most appropriate observational study that can be adopted for the above investigation is cross-sectional study design. Cross-sectional studies measure the prevalence of a health problem in a population. They also provide insight into the cause-effect relationship between the exposure and outcomes in an investigation. The study entails assessing the population of interest (sample) at a specific point of time(Rosenbaum, 2017). The selection of samples, in this case school-going children, is done based on their level of exposure and not outcome status. The outcomes of the study are acquired after the implementation of an intervention. Strategies such as random selection of the subjects are utilized to eliminate the risk of bias in the investigation. At the end of the study, researchers examine the outcomes and exposure at the same time to determine the cause-effect relationship of the variables (Rosenbaum, 2020). Therefore, the determination of the outcomes and effect of the exposures will be undertaken at the end of the project in cross-sectional study design.
The relevance of cross-sectional study design to the above investigation is attributable to a number of strengths. First, cross-sectional studies enable the acquisition of data from the subjects at one point. The implication is that highly accurate data is obtained to provide true insights into the effect of the adopted interventions as exposures (Rezigalla, 2020). The other strength is the fact that it will enable the investigation of multiple exposures and outcomes related to obesity among school-going children and their relevant variables. The obtained information can also be used in developing hypotheses to inform future investigations in the topic. The other strength with the design is its ability to facilitate in-depth investigations (Rezigalla, 2020). Accordingly, the results obtained from cross-sectionals studies can guide in-depth investigations into the issue of obesity among school-going children.
Despite the relevance to the issue of obesity among school-going children, cross-sectional studies have their limitations. One of them is the fact that they do not measure the incidence of obesity in the school-going children. Instead, it measures prevalence, which might not provide a true picture of historical data related to obesity among school-going children (Barría, 2018). The other limitation is that it does not provide information for use in making inference. Inference on the cause-effect relationship between the exposure and outcomes cannot be determined. It may also be difficult to interpret the associations between the exposure and outcomes in the research (Barría, 2018). It also does not provide information about the temporal relationship between the risk factors for obesity and its outcomes. I will learn about the prevalence of obesity among school-going children by using cross-sectional study design. I will also learn about the relationship between exposure to interventions such as physical activity and dietary modification and prevalence of obesity rates among school-going children (Barría, 2018). Therefore, it will inform my understanding of the problem.
References
Barría, R. M. (2018). Cohort Studies in Health Sciences.BoD – Books on Demand.
Rezigalla, A. A. (2020). Observational Study Designs: Synopsis for Selecting an Appropriate Study Design. Cureus, 12(1), e6692. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.6692
Rosenbaum, P. R. (2020). Design of Observational Studies. Springer Nature.
Rosenbaum, P. R. (2017). Observation and Experiment: An Introduction to Causal Inference. Harvard University Press.