Psychology draft assignment

Directions for Draft Paper

Review: Upload your draft of your final paper here. It will include title page, abstract, body of paper (with headers), box score (Table 2) and including exclusion/inclusion table data (Table 1), and references. If doing a systematic review, please complete a PRISMA flow chart. At the very least, I need your MS Word or Excel Table with your authors, dates, IVs, DVs, Methods (experiment? Survey, etc.), populations studied, sample size, and major findings section headers and complete info (except final outcomes).

How to write Method Section

Covidence breaks down how to write a methods section for a review study. Note that narrative reviews do not need as much front-loading for article screening, but you want to be as thorough as possible.

The methods section of your systematic review describes what you did, how you did it, and why. Readers need this information to interpret the results and conclusions of the review. Often, a lot of information needs to be distilled into just a few paragraphs. This can be a challenging task, but good preparation and the right tools will help you to set off in the right direction 

Systematic reviews are so-called because they are conducted in a way that is rigorous and replicable. So it’s important that these methods are reported in a way that is thorough, clear, and easy to navigate for the reader – whether that’s a patient, a healthcare worker, or a researcher. 

Like most things in a systematic review, the methods should be planned upfront and ideally described in detail in a project plan or protocol. Reviews of healthcare interventions follow the  PRISMA guidelines  for the minimum set of items to report in the methods section. But what else should be included? It’s a good idea to consider what readers will want to know about the review methods and whether the journal you’re planning to submit the work to has expectations on the reporting of methods. Finding out in advance will help you to plan what to include.

Keep it brief

The methods section should be succinct but include all the noteworthy information. This can be a difficult balance to achieve. A useful strategy is to aim for a brief description that signposts the reader to a separate section or sections of supporting information. This could include datasets, a flowchart to show what happened to the excluded studies, a collection of search strategies, and tables containing detailed information about the studies. This separation keeps the review short and simple while enabling the reader to drill down to the detail as needed. And if the methods follow a well-known or standard process, it might suffice to say so and give a reference, rather than describe the process at length. 

Follow a structure

A clear structure provides focus. Use of descriptive headings keeps the writing on track and helps the reader get to key information quickly. What should the structure of the methods section look like? As always, a lot depends on the type of review but it will certainly contain information relating to the following areas:

1. Selection criteria 

2. Search 

3. Data collection and analysis (not relevant for this class)

4. Study quality and risk of bias (not relevant for our class; requires three reviewers)

Let’s look at each of these in turn.

1. Selection criteria 

The criteria for including and excluding studies are listed here. This includes detail about the types of studies, the types of participants, the types of interventions and the types of outcomes and how they were measured. 

2. Search 

Comprehensive reporting of the search is important because this means it can be evaluated and replicated. The search strategies are included in the review, along with details of the databases searched. It’s also important to list any restrictions on the search (for example, language), describe how resources other than electronic databases were searched (for example,  non-indexed journals), and give the date that the searches were run.  The PRISMA-S extension provides guidance on reporting literature searches. 

(you are not doing a full systematic review, but you ARE using the systematic search strategy)

Conclusion

Careful planning, clear writing, and a structured approach are key to a good methods section. 

Please use the information below (Protocol II) to guide your method section for review studies. Formulate data analysis plan

Please continue the protocol you started last term. This time you will focus on assessing study quality. Things to consider along with any others you think of, or come across in your readings: sample size, sample representativeness, publication date, reliability of measures, validity of methods.

Copy and paste this into a MS word document and complete it, then submit it to the drop box.

1.

I. Quality assessment

What criteria will be used to assess methodological quality (e. g., minimum sample size? Experimental design quality? Longitudinal design quality - if relevant; measures were all reliable and valid, per-reviewed, etc.)??

______________ The study will only consider peer-reviewed articles that relied on measurement tools to obtain data and information. Studies that used randomized controlled trials will be considered. Studies with surveys, interviews, and questionnaires will also be considered. Studies conducted using themes in the determination of their outcomes will equally be considered. The selected studies will be those with subjects who will either be counselors, counselees, individuals with mental health problems, individuals who had experienced mental health problems, adult participants, and children. The selected peer-reviewed articles will be those published between the year 2019 and the year 2024. Studies with sample sizes of less than 3 participants will not be considered for the review. The reliability and validity of the studies will determined by the effectiveness of the listed measurement tools in producing the required data or information and in answering the research questions.

_________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How will quality assessment be performed? (I recommend adding a quality column in your word or excel table and putting the evaluation info there; you can also include a paragraph in your method about using only peer-reviewed articles using reliable measures (alpha = .70 or higher) and will evaluate any design issues if there are questions - unequal groups or not enough men, etc.).

_________ Quality assessment will be performed by looking at the measurements used in the study. The research will not consider studies that lack measurement tools in their data extraction. Studies that with narrative reviews with systematic search will be ignored because such studies lack measurement tools. Studies with data that have been extracted using measurements that are applicable or can be generalized in similar scenarios will be considered. Adequate statistical power will be a key consideration in determining the quality of information and data from a study. Studies with sample sizes of less than 3 participants will be ignored.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

2.

II. Data extraction (E. g., percentages of people from different genders experiencing depression, diagnosed with depression, displaying signs of depression or a variant of depression; raw depression scores or z-scores for depression-related mental illness; number of significant differences found across genders, et. Tell a good story, but a true and accurate one, with your data).

What are the key data to be extracted?

__ This study will consider the results of the studies under review. There will be a need to consider the results in terms of meeting the research goals and answering the research questions. For instance, it will be important to determine whether a study meets its stated hypothesis. As for qualitative studies, the themes will be analyzed to determine whether they correspond to the aims of the studies.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

How will data extraction be performed, and how will extracted data be presented? (Again, I recommend a table but depending on what you are showing, a graph could be interesting to show different symptoms - oh, an

The graph shows measurements and the number of studies that were extracted for each category. The data from the 15 studies were extracted using this guideline.

Number of studies and Measurements

Number of studies Study themes Randomized controls Interviews Online survey onlne therapy 2 1 6 2 4 Series 2 Study themes Randomized controls Interviews Online survey onlne therapy Series 3 Study themes Randomized controls Interviews Online survey onlne therapy