This assessment is:
A group oral presentation.
Part A requires you to:
Part B requires you to:
This assessment help page assumes you have read the unit outline, assessment description and marking rubric provided in Moodle.
Start planning your search by:
For this assessment, you may need to conduct several searches.
The following search concepts are examples only. You will need to identify appropriate concepts and terms for the assessment yourself.
| Key Concepts | Alternate Terms |
| stroke | "cerebrovascular accident", "cerebral infarction", "transient ischaemic attack" |
| elderly | older, senior, geriatric |
Now use Boolean operators to connect your search terms.
Use OR to combine all the terms for the same concept: Stroke OR Cerebrovascular Accidents
Use AND to combine terms from different concepts: Stroke AND Prehospital Care
Use quotation marks to search for a phrase: "Stroke"
Use brackets to group all terms from the same concept together
Use truncation to search for only the first part of the word (useful if there are likely to be plurals)
Watch the following video to learn more about Boolean operators:
When you put it all together:
(Stroke OR "Cerebrovascular accident" OR "cerebral infarction" OR "transient ischaemic attack") AND (elderly OR older OR senior OR geriatric)
You may need to alter search terms to get better results.
This assessment requires you to use at least 10 peer-reviewed journal articles for your research.
In your initial search you can check the box marked “Peer-reviewed Journals” under Availability to ensure that the results are all peer-reviewed.
For nursing, more recent articles are preferred because new and updated information may have come out. Therefore, it is important when using Quicksearch to ensure that you are indicating a time frame (usually within the last 5 years) under Creation Date for the most accurate and up-to-date results.
Suggested databases for this assessment are:
When was the article published? Check the assessment instructions to see if a date range has been given. Generally, for nursing, more recent articles are preferred because new and updated information may have come out.
How old are the references? Has the article referred to other fairly recent articles?
How old is the data used? Check to see if the data was collected a long time before the study was published. If it has been, do the authors explain why this was?
Has this source, or its data, been updated?
Is there likely to be more recent information available elsewhere?
Is this information relevant to your assignment? Is there likely to be better information? This will depend on what you are trying to find out. Often you will need to read the abstract to find out.
Is this aimed at the correct audience?
Articles for this assessment should be peer reviewed. If you are not sure, you can copy and paste the title into Quicksearch to see if the purple peer review icon shows in the result:
You can also check the journal title in Ulrichs. If it has a small black icon that looks like a book next to the title, it is peer reviewed (called refereed in Ulrichs).
Who wrote it? What are their qualifications? Are the qualifications relevant to the topic? Most peer reviewed articles will have information about the authors, often at the end or hyperlinked, with their qualifications listed.
Where do they work? Who do they work for? Generally, authors should be working for a university or a research centre of some kind.
Are they likely to have a good understanding of this field?
Is the information reliable?
What is the study population size and characteristics? Keep in mind this is dependent on the study type, for example qualitative studies usually have smaller study populations than quantitative. The population does need to be fairly similar however, to enable accurate results and to make sure any effects reported are due to the treatment. For example, a treatment for back pain may look more effective if the group receiving the treatment is much younger than the group that doesn't.
Is there a control group? This is a group that does not receive the treatment, and allows the researchers to compare them to the group getting the treatment to see if it works.
Is there blinding? This is where the control and treatment groups do not know whether they are getting the intervention or not. Remember though that this might not be possible for some interventions, for example researchers testing a new vaccine can give the control group a saline solution instead of the vaccine, but if they are testing a new massage technique it is almost impossible for the participants to be unaware if they received a massage or not!
Do the statistics make sense and match the authors' claims?
Have all sides been considered?
Who funded the study? Is it a company, university or research organisation? If it is a company, do they manufacture a product being tested? If you are not sure, can always search for them on the internet. If the URL ends in .com, it is a company.
Is there any obvious bias where the authors or their employers are likely to benefit from the study recommendations? For example, if the authors work for a particular company and recommend the use of one of their products, this could indicate a risk of bias.
Does it state what the authors' were trying to find out? The research aims or questions should be clearly stated in the beginning of the article, and the conclusions should describe what they found out.
The following PDFs from the Study Skills website can help with this assessment.
FedCite is the one stop shop for all your referencing needs. In nursing, you need to use APA 7. Look at the Using APA 7 section to find out general information on how to cite and reference, and the source types for specific examples.