Article Review: Policy Analysis Assignment Instructions

Overview

This assignment is designed to introduce you to the analysis research you will utilize in your final healthcare policy. The objective is to find scholarly research, published within the last 5 years, that analyzes the data on current health outcomes in the US.  The article should discuss how health outcomes as measures and how changes in the healthcare implementation would affect those outcomes.  If at all possible please reframe for opinionated or biased research as it takes away from the overall conversation about what is effective and what is not effective in health care policy. Learning how to get to good factual numbers and research is the cornerstone of this assignment. If you are going to be involved with healthcare policy it is vital you have the ability to identify biased and unbiased research. Lastly, remember that this assignment should be written in such a way that the reader, after reviewing your work, could determine if the research you have critiqued would be useful in their future literature review. Detail is important!

 

Instructions

You will utilize the Article Review Template provided for this assignment. There is no minimum word count as the analysis and review of the research article will determine the length of the assignment. The template is broken into 4 categories and aligns with the Article Review Grading Rubric for this assignment. The categories are listed below with additional information

 

  1. Author’s proposed purpose/goal of the Article – Provide a brief overview of the article, its intended audience, and its purpose. This is designed to be the summation of the abstract of the research article.

 

  1. Analysis of Key Issues – You should identify the key issues that are discussed in the article. If the article is a formal research study then the discussion of the methodology and research questions should be included in this section. If the article is a gathering or data, then the methodology and the data should be presented in this section. Remember this is the section where you provide the core of the research data and methods and should be thoroughly discussed. At the end, you will discuss the key issues determining their strengths and weaknesses and providing evidence to support your conclusions.

 

  1. Conclusions/Findings/Assumption – This section is here you will discuss the author’s conclusions, findings or assumption as they relate to the topic being research within the article. This is also where you can identify any biases within the article that may have influenced the author.

 

  1. Personal assessment and reflection – A very important section of the article review. Here you will provide several assessments of how the article can be used in support or rejection of current healthcare policy. You should also discuss how the article affected your learning on the topic. Finally, you should relate the learning back to biblical principles associated with the care of others.

 

Format all references/citations used in your review in APA or AMA style (dependent on your degree programs requirements). The article should be cited at the end of your work along with any other citations you used in your review. Length will vary with the amount of information within the article but a good baseline is 1-2 pages double spaced.