A Critical Analysis of Methods used to Study association of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) with depression
Assessment instructions
For your assessment, you will choose one area of health that interests you or pick from the list of suggested areas provided by the Module Lead. Choosing an area of health will focus your work on a specific topic and make it easier to produce a coherent and critical assessment.
After you have chosen your area of health, you should then conduct a literature review to find research in the area that you can critically discuss in your assessment. The research you choose to include in your assessment should use similar methods to those we have discussed on the course (e.g., observational studies, experimental designs, sampling methods, mixed methods, qualitative research, systematic reviews and meta-analyses). You will not receive marks for your knowledge of your health area, the marks are awarded for your knowledge of research methods.
Your task is then to provide a critical commentary of your chosen research. This means that you should discuss the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen research alongside what factors mean for the conclusions we can draw from the research.
Your critical commentary should be ‘evidence based’, that means you should be basing your discussions and points on evidence and other research. For example, if you say that cross-sectional research is limited because you cannot infer causation, then you should provide evidence from credible sources to support your claim. You might also include suggestions as to how that limitation can be overcome (e.g., suggest different designs and cite evidence to support your points).
The word-limit is 3000 words (+/- 10%) and you are free to structure the assessment however you see fit. However, you must use APA 7th formatting throughout.
Example extracts
1.Example text critiquing the extent to which observational designs can inform causality in the study of sleep quality and chronic pain.
In recent years, research has suggested that there are several factors associated with sleep health. For example, Bloggs et al. (2020) reported that there was a positive correlation between the experience of chronic pain and sleep quality. However, this study used a cross-sectional observational design where participants were asked to self-report the severity of their chronic pain and sleep quality at a single time points which limits the conclusions that can be drawn for several reasons. For example, the Bradford-Hill criteria (Bradford-Hill, 1962) suggest that there are nine criteria that if met are associated with causal relationships, with a time-lag between the proposed cause and subsequent effect being vital (Dongaonkar et al., 1998). However, in cross-sectional designs, measurements are made at a single time point with no time lag between variables, making it impossible to distinguish between cause and effect (Smith et al., 2010). Consequently, it is unclear from cross-sectional designs whether chronic pain severity leads to poor sleep quality, whether poor sleep quality leads to worse chronic pain severity, or whether the relationship is bidirectional, with each impacting the other. To investigate causal relationships between variables, researchers need to use alternative research methods.
One such method that can inform causal relationships are longitudinal observational designs. In contrast to cross-sectional designs, longitudinal designs require participants to provide measurements at multiple time-points, therefore introducing a temporal lag between the variables of interest as per the Bradford-Hill criteria (Bradford-Hill, 1962). Meaklim et al. (2022) recruited n = 300 participants diagnosed with various chronic pain conditions and asked them to self-report their pain severity and sleep quality every month for 12-months. The authors reported that those reporting poor sleep quality and low pain severity at baseline were twice as likely to report severe pain severity at follow-up when compared to those with good sleep quality at baseline, suggesting a causal role for sleep quality in the experience of chronic pain (see also Kelly et al., 2009; 2012). Furthermore, the authors also reported a ‘dose-response’ between sleep quality and pain severity, another key Bradford-hill criterion, in that the worse the sleep quality at baseline, the more severe the pain severity at follow-up. We can have more confidence in longitudinal designs when investigating causality because they are characterised by repeated measurements over time. However, although longitudinal observational designs are better able to inform causality than their cross-sectional counterparts, there are still inherent limitations in all observational designs (cross-sectional and longitudinal) that limit the conclusions that can be drawn (for a review, see Bei et al., 2020). One key limitation of observational designs is that it is very difficult, and some argue impossible (Cartwright et al., 2009), to control known (and unknown) confounding variables (Benevidez et al., 2014).
Frequently asked questions
1.What are the example areas of health that I can choose from?
Some suggested areas include: chronic pain in people living with arthritis, sleep health in adults living with mental health difficulties, HIV infection in homeless populations, the effects of screen time on children and adolescent health outcomes, cardiovascular health in people from low socioeconomic status groups.
2.Can I choose an area of health that is not on the provided list?
Yes, you can choose any area of health that interests you. However, it is important to be confident that there is enough research in the area using different methodological approaches so that you can fully address the assessment requirements.
3.Is the focus on the area of health or the research methods?
You should focus most of your assessment on research methods. Your area of health is to focus your discussions on a specific topic/area. You will not receive marks for your knowledge of your health area, the marks are awarded for your knowledge of research methods.
4.Do you have any example assessment from previous students?
No, we don’t have any example assessments as this is a new module and no other students have completed the assessment yet. However, the module team have produced example text that will give you an idea of what to write.
5.What referencing and formatting system are we using?
You should format your assessment using APA 7th.
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