The objective of this essay is to present a critique of Adikusuma and Qiyaam (2017)’s article on The Effect of Education through Short Message Service (SMS) Messages on Diabetic Patients Adherence. The researchers seek to establish the effectiveness of using mobile phone messages to educate diabetic patients on the methods of managing their health problem and the levels of adherence to their medications that the process yields. This critique reports that the findings of the study are credible since the researchers adopt an effective design, use effective methods of data collection, and borrow extensively from extant literature in the identification of their research gap. However, issues are found concerning the generalizability of the findings and the size of sample used.
The researchers adopt a quasi-experimental design of research. This approach is lauded by experts as one of the most credible methods of research for the fact that it allows for the development of both intervention and control groups (Maltby, Williams, and McGarry, 2014). The researchers benefit from this approach since they create samples for the two categories for use in controlling for factors that could affect the credibility of findings. For instance, the intervention group involves those respondents that were sent the mobile phone messages on the need to adhere to their medications. On the contrary, the control group was made up of those that did not receive such messages. This design of the quasi-experimental research approach works as a safeguard for internal validity because it avoids randomization. It is however critical to note that the fact that the design does not use randomized samples during the creation of the intervention and control groups limits the generalization of the results (Sandelowski, 2000). This argument is grounded in the fact that the results might have been affected by variables that the researchers did not control for. It means that the researchers might find it difficult to generalize their findings, which is a major limitation of their research design. However, the use of the quasi-experimental design means that the researchers reduced the questionable validity of their findings because of the rigorousness of their methods.
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The research further adopts a prospective data collection method, which is reported to be useful in avoiding the individual biases that would result from collection of data using the retrospective methods (Sandelowski, 2000). The choice of using interviews and the Morisky Medical Adherence Questionnaire provides a further tool of collecting information from respondents with the minimal levels of bias. For instance, during the interviews, the researchers were presented with an opportunity of prompting the participants to explain and expound on issues that would contribute to the validity of such data. In addition, the questionnaires allowed the respondents to respond to the study questions at their convenience, which might have enabled them to assess their situations and give honest responses. The study collects data from fifty respondents (relatively small sample) that were recruited a well-defined structure based on criteria for inclusion and exclusion. Such criteria, therefore, allow the investigators to use only the categories of respondents that were required for their study. Specifically, they only hoped to recruit respondents who presented to the hospitals for type II diabetes and who had been using anti-diabetic medications within the last six months. Therefore, the investigators used appropriate methods of data collection, which is why the findings of the analysis could be credible.
However, as much as the research used credible methods of data collection, it is notable that the article does not mention the methods and tools of data analysis. This factor raises curiosity among readers of the article concerning how the study treated outliers, which means that it is possible to argue that some of their analysis could be affected by bias since they produced insignificant correlations with the variables of the study (Polit-O'Hara and Beck, 2006). Nevertheless, the researchers attempt to counter this effect of apparent in appropriate methods of data collection through presenting their analysis in visuals such as tables and quantitative values, which suggest that they conducted proper statistical analysis.
The results of the research are credible despite the few shortcomings described above. For instance, the fact that the researchers employ effective methods of data collection such as interviews means that the findings are credible. In addition, the fact that the methods allowed them to collect data primary data that enabled them to avoid the personal biases that would have resulted from the use of secondary data. Furthermore, even while they do not mention it, the researchers conducted useful statistical analyses that enable them to deconstruct the data into themes for comparison with extant literature. Therefore, the writers contribute to the existing body of literature that explains the interventions for diabetic medications.
In conclusion, Adikusuma and Qiyaam use a rigorous study design, the quasi-experimental approach, in studying the effects of using mobile phone messages in teaching patients with type II diabetes on the importance of adhering to medication. It is found that the method is effective since patients in which such an intervention was used reported more positive outcomes compared to those who did not. The findings of the study are credible since the researchers controlled for the variables and collected data using appropriate methods. However, the researchers should focus on obtaining a larger sample in their future studies in addition to using random sampling in the identification of the intervention and control groups.
References
Adikusuma, W., & Qiyaam, N. (2017). The Effect of Education through Short Message Service (SMS) Messages on Diabetic Patients Adherence. Scientia Pharmaceutica , 85 (2), 23.
Maltby, J., Williams, G., McGarry, J., & Day, L. (2014). Research methods for nursing and healthcare . Routledge.
Polit-O'Hara, D., & Beck, C. T. (2006). Essentials of nursing research: Methods, appraisal, and utilization (Vol. 1). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Sandelowski, M. (2000). Focus on research methods-whatever happened to qualitative description?. Research in nursing and health , 23 (4), 334-340.
