|
 
 |
| LETTER TO EDITOR |
|
| Year : 2021 | Volume
: 8
| Issue : 3 | Page : 221 |
|
Critical Comment on “Talk To Parents: Bridge the Knowledge Gap in Parents with Epileptic Children”
Radha Saini
WHO Consultant, COMAHS, Sierra Leone, West Africa
| Date of Submission | 07-Feb-2020 |
| Date of Decision | 20-May-2020 |
| Date of Acceptance | 04-Jun-2020 |
| Date of Web Publication | 04-Mar-2022 |
Correspondence Address:
Radha Saini
WHO Consultant, COMAHS, Sierra Leone
West Africa
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/cjhr.cjhr_8_20
How to cite this article:
Saini R. Critical Comment on “Talk To Parents: Bridge the Knowledge Gap in Parents with Epileptic Children”. CHRISMED J Health Res 2021;8:221 |
How to cite this URL:
Saini R. Critical Comment on “Talk To Parents: Bridge the Knowledge Gap in Parents with Epileptic Children”. CHRISMED J Health Res [serial online] 2021 [cited 2022 Jul 7];8:221. Available from: https://www.cjhr.org/text.asp?2021/8/3/221/339051 |
Sir,
I appreciate the article “Talk to parents: Bridge the knowledge gap in parents with epileptic children” published in CHRISMED J Health Res (serial online) 2019 (cited 2020 February 7);6:204-6 to raise an important issue of bridging the knowledge gap in parents with epileptic children.[1] However I have a few concerns about the methodology and results mentioned in the study.
First, the authors have mentioned in the material and methods section that a prospective cross-sectional study was carried out in the pediatrics department at a tertiary care center in North India. Epidemiologic studies are either descriptive or analytical studies. Descriptive studies comprise case reports, case series reports, cross-sectional studies, and surveillance studies, whereas analytical studies are either experimental or observational. Observational studies are case–control and cohort studies, and prospective studies involve taking a cohort of study patients and then watching them over a long period, wherein the outcome of interest needs to be common.
Hence, how can a study be “prospective” and “cross-sectional” at the same time?
Second, how these fifty caregivers were enrolled in the study and what was the time frame of the study? How the sample of 50 was calculated? Cross-sectional studies aim to measure the outcomes and exposures in the study at the same time. They give a snapshot of the situation for the particular period, and hence, this study is a cross-sectional study. In cross-sectional studies, the aim is to estimate the prevalence of unknown parameter(s) from the target population using a random sample. Hence, an adequate sample size is needed to estimate the population prevalence with good precision.[2] Anyways, if the sample size is too small, the authors may not be able to answer the study question. Which sampling criterion was used by the authors to select the sample of 50 parents is also not mentioned?
Third, in the abstract section, the authors have mentioned that “Parents of children on polytherapy (41.67%) were more aware of side effects of medicines as compared to parents of children on monotherapy (10.53%) (P = 0.014),” whereas in the results section, neither this result of P = 0.014 is mentioned anywhere nor any table is displayed showing the same result.
Moreover, no statistical tests are applied to infer the final results. The authenticity of the results of every research study depends largely on the accuracy of the statistical methods used by the authors. It would have been ethical had the authors used any statistical test of significance to claim their results and then an association with the demographic variables could have been established using either t-test or Chi-square test. Merely displaying the “percentage” is unjustifiable and puts a question mark on the authenticity of study results.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Varghese A, Sharma M. Talk to parents: Bridge the knowledge gap in parents with epileptic children. CHRISMED J Health Res 2019;6:204-6. [Last accessed on 2020 Feb 07].  |
| 2. | Pourhoseingholi MA, Vahedi M, Rahimzadeh M. Sample size calculation in medical studies. Gastroenterol Hepatol Bed Bench 2013;6:14-7. |
|
Search Pubmed for