Good Example Of Essay On Critiquing Sampling Strategy And Sample Size In A Research Article

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Introduction

The article chosen for critique is an article by Kroman et al. (2000) that does a population-based study on the impact of age on forecast of breast cancer. The purpose is to analyze the article for the chosen methods of sampling and the sampling strategy.
In this article, the authors investigate the impact of age specifically young age for prognosis of breast cancer and the influence on treatment. For the purpose of this investigation, the authors did a population-based study on a sample of ten thousand odd women. The women were in the age group of less than 50 years from a patient’s database (Kroman et al., 2000)

Critique

The article does not define any clear strategy for identifying the dependent and independent variables for the study. The article gives a specific number of population size that was undertaken for the study. However, it does not specify the strategy that was used for deriving that number. The strategy for obtaining the population sample is also from a single source that is a patient’s database. In order to have a clear and effective study, the study would have benefitted from a robust sampling methodology. The article also does not specify the sampling procedures undertaken. The sample size also does not generalize the study but rather makes it specific to a particular area. The article has some salient points with the use of the sample data collected. The article provides a valuable tool for a study on impact of age on breast cancer. However, the impact of lack of sampling strategy for the study is evident in the results as well. The results give a hypothesis that cannot be applicable to a larger area even in the country where the database has been derived.
There are several stages to a social science research of which data collection and analysis are the most critical ones. Any research must follow some basic methods that would help in creating a strong strategy for creating a robust sample-based study. The study in the article would have benefitted from a well-defined data collection strategy (Frankfort-Nachmias & Nachmias, 2008; Mayfield, 1986).

References

Frankfort-Nachmias, C., & Nachmias, D. (2008). Research methods in the social sciences
(7th ed.). New York, NY: Worth.
Kroman, N., Jensen, M. B., Wohlfahrt, J., Mouridsen, H. T., Andersen, P. K.,
Melbye, M., & Ross, G. (2000). Factors influencing the effect of age on prognosis in
breast cancer: population based studyCommentary: much still to learn about relations
between tumour biology, prognosis, and treatment outcome in early breast cancer.
Bmj, 320(7233), 474-479.
Mayfield, M. K. (1986). Basic Research Methods for Librarians. Bulletin of the Medical Library
Association, 74(1), 50.