How does the implementation of scientific rigor, adherence to best practices, and demonstrated effectiveness in peer-reviewed clinical research studies contribute to the overall reliability and credib
V alerio 1 Ariana V alerio CMD 419- Research in Communication Disorders Professor Anema 2 May 2023 W riting Assignment #2 Throughout the course of the semester , we have worked with many articles that have been peer -reviewed and are considered to be clinical research studies. W e have become critical readers as we identified their implementation of scientific rigor , assured that it included the best practice possible, and have been proven ef fective in a peer -reviewed journal. In order for an article to have scientific rigor , it must follow each step of the scientific method which then allows the reader to analyze the research provided. However , one article that was given in this course to evaluate was, The Child’ s Learning of English Morphology written by Jean Berko in 1958. This article is dif ferent from the others read before as it was one that was not peer -reviewed nor publicized, therefore I set out to determine whether or not it can be considered to have scientific rigor . In terms of type of research strategy , this study used a descriptive research strategy throughout. As noted in the lecture slides, a subsection of the descriptive research strategy is comparative research which can measure the behavior of two or more types of participants as well as measure the performance of children vs. adults on respiratory functions. In this article specifically , it states, “This distribution was utilized only in comparing the performance of the boys with that of the girls”[Berko, 1958, p.159]. The article also states, “Having ascertained that V alerio 2 there was no dif ference between boys’ and girls’ answers, we combined the sexes and went on to compare the younger with the older children” [Berko, 1958, p.159]. There are many dif ferent research designs that researchers include in their studies. In this particular study , the author chose group design as the research design feature. W ithin group design however , there are two dif ferent subcategories: between subjects which means the study examined dif ferent groups of participants and within subjects that examined the same participants multiple times. Both between and within the subject of group design are present in this study . The research study began with the same groups being evaluated and then the researchers decided to divide the main groups, therefore making it a group design that included between subjects and within subjects. After reading this article in depth, it was concluded that it lacked scientific rigor . Although it had a clear research strategy and research design, the lack of scientific rigor was still present. One example that shows the lack of scientific rigor is the way in which the participants were chosen as well as the way they were divided and placed into groups. The ages, backgrounds, and genders of participants in each group were very dif ferent and not at all similar . For example, “The children at the preschool ranged between four and five years in age. T welve girls and seven boys were asked all items of the completed test, and two groups, one of three boys and three girls and one of five boys and three girls, were each asked half of the inflexional items in preliminary testing” [Berko, 1958, p.153].This caused a dif ference in the scores for the group. Another example that shows lack of scientific rigor is the lack of reliability . The researchers noted that there wasn’ t an equal number of pictures to represent the morphological rules that they were assessing. This therefore, decreased the reliability of the research and its scores.V alerio 3 References Jean Berko (1958) The Child's Learning of English Morphology , WORD, 14:2-3, 150-177, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1958.1 1659661
