NURS 701 Assignment 2 Research Article Review

NURS 701 – Assignment 2 – Research Article Review

Refer to the article “Enhancing HIV Communication Between Parents and Children: Efficacy of the Parents Matter! Program” by Miller et al. (2011). Answer the following questions pertaining to this article.

a) What statistical methods did the researchers report using in analyzing the results of their research? (2 pts.)

b) What are the experimental units in this study? (2 pts.)

c) What was the total sample size for this study and how many subjects were assigned to each arm (treatment) in this study? (2 pts.)

d) Referring to Table 1, what test could be used to compare the monthly income distribution across the treatment arms? Explain. (2 pts.)

e) Though researchers did not state this in their paper, I conducted appropriate statistical tests to compare the treatment arms on sex of preadolescent child, parent education, monthly family income level, and participating parent. There were no significant differences between treatment arms found on the basis of these characteristics (p > .05). How do these results strengthen subsequent treatment arm comparisons? Explain. (2 pts.)

f) Starting on pg. 554 the researchers discuss MEASURES. Though they didn’t say explicitly in their paper, why do you think they recoded most of these responses from 1 – 3 point scale to a 0 – 1 dichotomous scale? (2 pts.)

g) Also in the MEASURES section of the paper the author’s talk about scales for (a) ways to protect oneself, (b) abstinence, and (c) condom use, how were these scales calculated?

1 h) In Table 2, the researchers report on the change from baseline to 12-month in terms of parents perceiving their child as ready to learn about sex. What test was used to compare the percentage point change in the percent of parents feeling their child is ready to learn about sex from baseline to 12-month’s post-intervention between the treatment arms (brief vs. control, enhanced vs. control, enhanced vs. brief)? Do you think this test was appropriate? Explain. (3 pts.)

The JMP output below reproduces the results the researchers reported for the comparison of the Enhanced vs. Brief arms of the study in terms of the increase in the percentage of parents perceiving their child as ready to learn about sex. Parts (i) – (l) pertain to the results shown below.

i) Is the p-value reported by the author’s supported by the results above? Explain. (2 pts.)

2 j) In addition to the test used by the author’s, I have added the results of two other tests that could have been used, what are these tests? (2 pts.)

k) Is the 95% Confidence Interval for the Percentage Point Difference reported by the researchers supported by the results above? Explain. (2 pts.)

l) The “relative risk” (RR) for this study is reported above, along with a CI. Interpret this “relative risk”, or better stated “relative benefit”, for the researchers. (2 pts.)

m) Referring again to the results of Table 2, below I have compared the percentage of parents who perceived that their adolescent child was ready to learn about sex between the Enhanced arm and Brief arm at baseline and again at 12-month post- intervention using Fisher’s Exact test. The results are shown below.

Baseline Comparison 12-month Postintervention

What do these tests suggest about the difference between the Brief and Enhanced methods for increasing parental perceptions regarding the readiness of their child to learn about sex? Do these results seem contradictory to what the researchers

3 conclude regarding the comparison between the Enhanced and Brief arms of the study? (3 pts.)

Note: The same test strategy used in Table 2 was again used to analyze the results in Table 4.

n) In Table 3, the researchers compare the three treatment arms in terms of the change from baseline to 12-months post-intervention on the three communication areas: HIV, Abstinence, and Condoms, using Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test. Why do you think they used this test to compare the changes between the treatment arms? (2 pts.)

o) In Table 3, the researchers used means and standard deviations to summarize the results, were these appropriate for these data? Why or why not?