Achieving Evidence Based Practice, Essay Example

For this assignment, I selected to analyze “Spirituality Among African American Women Living with HIV/AIDS” to determine its efficacy as a literature review (Leedy & Omrod, 2013). Based on the information provided in this passage, it appears that the author provides a meta-analytic view of the research conducted on this topic. For each informational claim, she cites up to five studies that have provided the same understanding of the topic. However, this discussion does not appear to be complete. While the author provides a comprehensive background of the topic, she does not appear to speak about the topic in depth (Hamer & Collinson, 2005). Interestingly, the discussion looks thorough, but a majority of the words on her page consist of citations. It would have therefore been beneficial to have conducted research that provided a broader understanding of the topic.

The reviewers didn’t convince me that the topic is important, although it did establish a strong connection between HIV and spirituality. This was the main feature discussed. It appears that the information is organized according to topics, which is evident by the titles provided as headings; the number of headings does appear to be adequate to achieve the author’s intended goals (Creswell, 2014). Furthermore, the tone is not neutral; it is too apparent that the writer is passionate about the topic which indicates that bias may be present. The main strength of this presentation is that it appears that the author is well-aware of all of the literature that has previously been produced on this topic. Many high quality sources are used to support each statement that the writer makes, contributing to its efficacy. Overall, I would award this literature review a 7 out of 10 because it has many strong points, but would benefit from being organized in a more effective manner. It appears that this is an excerpt of a paper and it is therefore plausible that reading the whole paper would allow the literature review to have greater meaning. However, it is also beneficial for the literature review to be understandable on its own.

References

Creswell, J. (2014). Research design (4th ed.). Thousand Oakes, California: Sage Publications, Inc. [CourseSmart version]. Retrieved from http://www.coursesmart.com

Hamer, S. & Collinson, G. (2005). Achieving evidence based practice: A handbook for practitioners. (2nd ed.). New York City, New York: Baillere Tindale.

Leedy, P. D. & Ormrod, J. E. (2013). Practical research: Planning and design (10th ed.).

Saddle River, New Jersey, NJ: Prentice-Hall.