to not able to figure out OpenUni assignment

[ouproblems]

Writing for traffic.
I thought I was fairly smart person, but clearly that's not the case. I am struggling with OU 1st assignment. Course is fairly technical. I am from different background. For1st assignment, there is a lot of reading and then I need to critically appraise a complex science paper using a framework in another scientific field.
Is it normal for all OU master's level modules. This is my 1st ever module and within a month, without any guidance and help, how do I assess validity of a research paper authored by an expert when I am complete beginner in field.

I am ok to fail this but dont want to fail without attempting. I have read papers, searched internet for more info but I am still pretty lost.

Can anyone with OU experience give some tips? Thank you

So apart from contacting your tutor, I'd say for this one you are on the right track of starting with the journal. Look on their website and see what the submission criteria/ process is.
On the study - who were the samples taken from: were all patients with symptom /condition X asked to consent to the blood via a defined pathway or was there potential for bias in who was asked. Then were there enough of them for it to be statistically significant, was the study endpoint well defined, were the right questions asked (what did they say they were going to do, what did they do, did the results reported actually tally with what they said they were going to do).

A blinded study is one where neither the patient or the person treating them knows which treatment they are getting. In the old days you'd have a stack of sealed envelopes with numbers on that the trial designer had made up and randomly draw one out of the box. That number would then be linked to (say) a bottle of tablets which have just the trial number on. This way I don't tell you 'ooh, thats great, you've got the shiny new treatment' and you feel better through the very real power of placebo
An RCT is a randomised, controlled trial. So you and I might know what you are getting, but the sealed envelope (or of course now the online randomiser) sends you to one arm of the trial - the investigation (shiny new) or control (best practice). We can then compare whether giving you the new drug is better or not. But there is potential for placebo/nocebo effects
The cohort is the characteristics of the patients - they must be matched - age. sex, ethnicity, disease stage, other diseases, smoking status, and various things can lead to them becoming misaligned. A common ones is people getting randomised to control and then dropping out when they find out that they aren't getting the new drug. Patient populations joining trials can be skewed as well as people may encourage younger or better performing patients to enroll.
Hope that helps a little

CMOTDibbler, I think what you''re describing as a cohort study is a case-control study

A cohort study is when you take a group of people/things, some of whom have been exposed to the thing you want to study and some of whom haven't. You then follow them up over time and see whether those who were exposed to Studied Thing are more likely to end up with a certain type of outcome (e.g. greater height, being diagnosed with a disease, having a higher IQ) than the people who weren't exposed to Studied Thing.

You may need to adjust your statistical analysis for factors such as age, other diseases, income, that could also be possible explanations for the relationship between Studied Thing and the outcome, but you don't have to start with matched participants.

OP A cohort study is different to a RCT because the manner in which people end up exposed to the Studied Thing isn't determined by the researcher using randomisation, but by some other factor.

It is a case control study if you are doing a retrospective, but certainly I'd use cohort to also describe a patient group randomised to an arm. It can be important in an RCT as outcomes in the control group will be better normally than in the general population due to the nature of hospitals participating in RCTs. For instance in the US, women of colour are very underrepresented in oncology studies, and household income and highest education much higher than in the general population (I'll have to dig out the citation on this)

I think you can use "cohort" in that way, but that's certainly not a common use and it's potentially confusing for OP, who needs to start with the most commonly used epidemiological definitions for the different study types.

The question of whether RCT participants are representative of the population they're supposed to come from is a different question to rigour of the study design in terms of identifying if Studied Thing influences the outcome. It's more about the generalisability of the findings whereas study design affects the probability that the observed relationship between Studied Thing and outcome is causal

The tutor would probably much rather you contacted them and asked for advice and another week's extension, than submit something you're not happy with and then say you need help. Although they mark your assignments, their primary role is tutor, not examiner.

Thank you everyone. I have asked for extension.

Contact your tutor, as one of mine said, "That's what I'm paid for"

Glad you got an extension, use it wisely.

I’m doing my nursing through the open uni so I am an undergraduate but am finding my tutor a great source of help. Do you have forums and other students you can ask how they are going about it? We have a WhatsApp group and we really help each other and the forum, which is specific to our tutor group, has been helpful for asking the tutor for help and examples

I’m doing very similar critiquing several RCT I’m using CASP tool to do so - PRISMA also helpful, don’t look to criticise the study but look for potential bias, study group size , researchers background, were aims and objectives clear etc
Starting is the hardest bit - good luck

Thank you all, it's submitted now :)

If it a pharm trial, you also need to be wary about quoted previous studies or trial methodology. Sometimes they say, "using the yyyyy methodology" when yyyyy has been used in 1 study by the same team published in an obscure publication.

I'm from the computer science field. Never be hesitant to clarify assignments with tutors. Also, if you could network with some colleagues on the course you'd be able to gather their perspectives too. I've never done OU, so not sure if that is possible?

Well done OP. I still remember the joy of getting OU work submitted. I used to have a weekend off and then move onto the next one. Hope you have a nice weekend.

How did it go , op ?

Do you have to appraise a clinical trial using a reporting guideline? There are lots of different guidelines depending on the scientific study design, they are all summarised in the Equator statement, the one for trials is CONSORT www.equator-network.org/. There are accompanying papers which explain them, but you go through each question and assess if it has been covered by the trial or not. E.g. randomisation, does it say it was randomised and report the method it used? The journal it is published in is not relevant as there will have been some peer review of it for it to have been published in the first place (you would hope). The book mentioned by Trisha Greenhalgh is a good introduction to study design, good luck