Part 1
I have noticed that there are significant differences between what I submitted and the model answer provided. The model answer is very specific and straight to the point when it comes to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the article that is being critically appraised. After looking at the work that I submitted, I have noted that there is a lot of “beating around the bush” and the strengths and weaknesses of the article are not identified directly. In fact, some sections of the work submitted almost look like a summary or a review of the work instead of critical appraisal. In the submitted work or paper, the appraisal part seems to be confined to the last bit on the paper under the title “cons of the study”. This is a very small section that does not fully appraise the article and only pinpoints some of the weaknesses that are identifiable in this research article.
Perhaps one of the strengths that I can identify in the article that I submitted is in regards to its overall arrangement. The report I submitted is formally structured while the report containing the model answer is not structured formally. It is rather informal comprising of many subheadings and bulleted points.
The other strength of the report I submitted is in regards to ethics. The article I submitted is very respectful to the original authors and the original content. There is no presence of any demeaning language in my article. The report containing the model and answer is however laden by a lot of disrespectful language that seems over the top.
Although this is a critical appraisal that is supposed to be characterized by brutal honesty, there are some parts of the model answer that are a quite overboard and that could have been avoided. Some of the elements are in fact based on pure assumptions. The comment that one of the authors “does not seem to be a big name in this field” is based on pure assumption and holds no ground. In addition, some of the comments are not given any justification by the person conducting the appraisal. This aspect exhibits itself, for example, when the results are being appraised where one of the comments in the weaknesses part is that “The writing of the results section is poor. There are many unclear sentences, and the structure is not adequate”. There is no mention of what would be the appropriate or correct model or format of the answer presentation and consequently, the appraiser is not doing anything more than just speculating.
One of the standout weaknesses of the report that I submitted is that there is no mention of the authors who conduct the study. A study is only as credible as its author and failure to appraise the credibility of the author is a great weakness. The model answer starts its appraisal of the article by assessing the credibility of the authors through the short biographic information provided about them.
Another weakness related to this is the lack of an appraisal for abstract and the introduction section. The work that I submitted commences with an introduction of its own instead of appraising the introduction of the article, and this is obviously a weakness.
This is also the case with the conclusion which has not been properly appraised in the work I submitted. The work I submitted just like for the introduction gives a conclusion of its own instead of appraising the one on the article.
Even though, some of the other components of the article such as the materials, methods and results have been mentioned. They have not been critically appraised. This is once again a huge weakness for the study.
When it comes to the grading, there is little likelihood that the paper submitted would score highly. As the above comparison of the paper and the model, answer has shown, there are a lot of weaknesses.
The primary weakness is perhaps the fact that the paper submitted appears to be more of a summary and review rather than a critical appraisal. The critical appraisal part is reserved for the end of the paper and in this section, it is in fact only a few weaknesses that are identified.
Therefore, based on the marking criteria, this paper would not score highly. In actual sense, the paper would get a low score of about 30%. The main reason for this would be that the paper deviated from its primary intention which was to critically appraise a research article and instead focused more on summarizing the main elements of the paper.
Part 2
After a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the model answer and the answer that I submitted, it is clear that I did not do well for the majority of this paper. The only elements that I can perhaps claim to have done well are in the structure and arrangement of the paper and a brief discussion of the main elements of the paper.
It is just now that I have realized that if I had accompanied my paper with a direct identification of the strengths of the paper in addition to these brief discussions, I would have performed brilliantly.
I also did not include some of the important sections of the article in the final paper that I submitted. The fact that I failed to appraise the credibility of the author is one of the primary weaknesses of my paper as it has been shown above. Failing to appraise or even mention the introduction, the abstract and the conclusion was obviously a huge mistake that will cost me a lot of marks.
A brief research on the internet reveals that the main aim of a critical appraisal is to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article of interest. It is supposed to look at different elements of the research article and identify the primary strengths and weaknesses.
Unfortunately, I approached the paper in a completely different manner. I approached the paper like a summary and review where I gave brief descriptions of the main parts of the paper, almost like a summary and a review of each. In many of the sections, I did not identify their strengths and weaknesses and in doing so, I completely deviated from the main purpose and intention of this assignment.
This meaning of all this or the primary outcome is that I scored lowly with the primary reason for this being that I misunderstood the primary intention of the assignment and, therefore, approached it in a completely wrong way.
