Public Health- Social and Behavioral Sciences in Public Health
Paper 1: Article Critique:
To "gain experience in locating and critically evaluating social and behavioral science research in order to better assess the empirical support for intervention programs of different types" this assignment requires that you locate, summarize, and critically evaluate 1 article that meet the following criteria:
Your choosen article must:
(1) be from a peer-reviewed journal
(2) report on an intervention that
(3) addresses a public health issue
(4) and is based on one of the theories or models discussed in class.
The issue can be any aspect of public health, for example: infant nutrition, environmental lead, smoking cessation, AIDS prevention, vaccinations, highway safety, tuberculosis control, physical activity, etc.
By intervention I mean some program or campaign or educational activity designed to change
(a) a determinant of health
(b) a health outcome, or
(c) a particular health behavior.
Thus, the article must go beyond a research study examining aspects of these theories and models. It must report on a theoretically-based intervention. An intervention could be a program to improve sidewalks or parks in a city to increase outdoor physical activity. An intervention could be a policy to provide nutritional supplements to pregnant women to improve newborn health outcomes. An intervention could be an education and peer-support program to encourage smoking cessation, or an advertising campaign to encourage physical activity among adolescent girls.
Your critique should include:
• A brief introduction to the article: which theory or model did the authors employ? What was the public health issue that was addressed?
• A brief summary of the theory (in your own words). This should be roughly one paragraph, and should demonstrate that you understand the basics of that theory or model.
• A summary of the intervention program, including target population, goals of the intervention, methods used to make the desired change, and the results of the intervention.
• The two most important pieces of this critique will be:
1) Your evaluation of the adequacy with which the theory or model was employed. For example, did the researchers/practitioners use all components of the theory? Did they operationalize (measure or create) theoretical constructs in a way that was true to the theory?
2) Your evaluation of the success of the intervention. Did it accomplish the intended goals? Could it have been improved in any way? What were the particular strengths of this intervention, or of this theoretical approach to the problem? What drawbacks do you see?