CRITICAL APPRAISAL

Critical Appraisal

Critical Appraisal

Introduction

The article “can a community-based 'smoke-free homes' intervention persuade families to apply smoking restrictions at homes?” written by Nisreen Alwan, Kamran Siddiqi, Heather Thomson, Joy Lane, Ian Cameron has been opted in this paper to be appraised critically. The paper will initially critically appraise the evidence to measure the strength and professional utility of the article, followed by evaluation of the method on the basis of selected technique.

Relevance of the Issue

The article discusses the adverse effects of second hand smoke (SHS) on children. The SHS is classified as a "known human carcinogen" (cancer-causing agent) by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of the United States, the U.S. National Toxicology Program and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a subsidiary of the National Organization of Health (Alwan, Et.al, 2010, pp. 49).

The authors identified quoting a US based survey, that ratio of exposure to SHS, which is 49% more in children living with low income families, compare to affluent families which is only 21%. Because of the existence of law banning smoking in public and work place in England, authors argue that this legislation limit people to smoke in their homes as well. However, home is the significant place for children to be exposed to SHS. This legislation in

The authors use SFH intervention, which is designed to persuade families to enforce restrictions on smoking in their homes. This intervention was delivered by a dedicated SFH team over a period of 6 months. The authors have chosen Beeston, in South Leads, because this area is

The intervention then uses a mixture of qualitative and quantitative method to evaluate the intervention, using telephonic and face to face surveys and focus group discussion. The authors surveyed 318 and 217 households before and after the intervention respectively. The results of the study indicate increase from 35% in smoke free homes (Alwan, Et.al, 2010, pp. 51). About 90% of the people after volunteering for this intervention were found to keep their houses free from smoking after three months. The focus group discussions with parents and children also showed acceptableness of the intervention among children and parents. The conclusion of the study shows that SFH can be enforced effectively and has the potential to improve children's health through preventing exposure to SHS in the home (Alwan, Siddiqi, Thomson, Lane and Cameron 2010, pp. 48-54).

Critical Appraisal

Critical Appraisal Technique

The critical appraisal technique used for evaluating the article is known as the Consort Statement Approach. This approach is appropriate for critically evaluating already published studies. These studies should have a parallel randomised controlled trial in order to be critically evaluated under the Consort Statement Approach. This is an evidence based approach that serves as a model for developing reporting guidelines for the different types of studies such as the diagnostic studies, systematic reviews, evaluation of the interventions and observational studies. The main idea of analysing these studies is to ensure that the findings are improved and the ways of reporting are ...