Week 3 Assignment Article Critique: HP609 Health Policy, Politics, and Perspectives

HP609 Health Policy, Politics, and Perspectives

Week 3 Assignment

Article Critique

Formatting Article Critique

Length: Your paper should be three-to-four (3–4) double-spaced pages.

Format your article critique by starting with the following:

The name of the author

The title of the article

The title of the journal, volume number, date, month, and page numbers in APA format

Brief statement of the issue or problem the article addresses

Brief statement of the purpose, hypothesis, and methods

Major conclusions

Compose Your Critique

After the opening summary, compose your critique. For this course, your critique needs to address the 1) technical components of the article and 2) your analysis and opinion of the article.

The technical components must include your assessment of:

The accuracy of the title

The specificity and accuracy of the abstract

The clarity of the purpose

The relevance and clarity of the literature review

Absence or error in facts or interpretation (This last item requires you to look at some of the author’s cited references when they seem to be in error or misused.)

Your analysis and opinion are the bulk of this critique and must address:

The relevancy of the topic and why it is important (or not)

Are the author’s assumptions stated clearly and located helpfully on the article?

Does the methodology seem appropriate for the issue and hypotheses? Could the work be replicated based on the description?

Is the data presented clearly, and is it error free? You do not need to do in-depth calculations, but evaluate the integrity in tables and charts; you may catch surprising errors.

Does the author provide a balanced focus on the most important and relevant ideas or weaken the article by over- or under-emphasizing certain ideas?

Does the author write clearly? Are there ambiguous statements that should have been clarified or more fully supported with evidence?

Does the author seem biased or have clear evidence of objectivity?

Are there gaps in the author’s work and conclusions that you believe warrant follow up?

HP609 Health Policy, Politics, and Perspectives

Week 4 Assignment

Field Experience Log

Guidelines for the Field Experience Requirement

You must “attend” at least 4 policy events, at least approximately 1 hour in length. Attendance of at least one of these events must be in-person.

Up to 3 of the 4 events may be online and they must have a health policy focus. Online health policy events/ webinars will be posted from which you may choose. In addition, you may identify your own online policy events, but please check with your instructor to make sure the events you choose are eligible for field hours.

The in-person event should cover policy discussion and present different perspectives. An example of an in-person event would be attendance at a local board of health meeting, a local school-board meeting, a legislative hearing or meeting, a meeting by an executive branch agency that falls under your governor, a meeting by advocacy organization or special interest group, or a meetings of a political party, political group, or candidate.

General Guidelines

At each event, take notes, and then write up an account and analysis of each event, using the template for field experience logs (below), and the Field Experience Rubric posted on Moodle.

You are required to complete and post a field event report assignment every other week, in Weeks 02, 04, 06, and 08.

Field Log Guidelines

As a way of demonstrating completion of this course requirement, you must submit, in writing, field logs that detail certain aspects of the event. The template for field experience logs is below.

Each event log should be three to five double-spaced pages of text.

Provide only a brief summary of the event itself.

The analysis section should be 550 to 800 words, and be the most developed component of the report. In the analysis section, you can write about the process of policy being made at this event, and/or you can write about the actual health policy issue being discussed/considered.

Your analysis should reference at least two sources. They can be from the learning materials in this course or other sources, but should be current (within the last 3 months).

Use APA format for citations and references.

Examples of logs are posted on Moodle.

Template for Field Experience Logs

The name of the event/meeting and who has sponsored it.

Describe the steps taken in preparation for the event (beyond listening or attending the event).

Place, date, time, and length of hearing/meeting/event.

Topic under discussion.

Names of participants and their titles (to the extent you can get them).

Brief description of the testimony/meeting/event. (If more than one issue is presented, discuss a sampling of issues.)

Analysis of the health policy issue and its implications for healthcare. Integrate course content and readings in your analysis. This section should be approximately 500 to 750 words.