YOUNG PEOPLE AND TYPE II DIABETES IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

CRITICAL APPRAISAL
Critical appraisal is the process of judging the trustworthiness and the relevance of the evidences (Chambers 2004) presented in a research paper (Carnwell and Daly 2001). A critical appraisal can also be carried out as part of data collection, nevertheless its ultimate aim is to further exclude articles with poor methodological quality. It is important to use appraisal tools that are evidence based. A quantitative and qualitative critical appraisal tool (Appendices 1 and 2) will be the first step in assessing the quality of chosen studies (Greenhalgh 2010). This will be followed by making use of more specific critical appraisal tools depending on whether the study is a survey, a cohort, or a randomised control trial. The following questions should be considered as the essentials of appraising an article:
What are the results?
Are they significant?
Are the results valid?
How was the research done?
How will these results help me answer my research question?
However, the type of research paper included will determine the critical appraisal tool to be used. Thus, a critical appraisal is important on account of the fact that this literature review is not out to dismiss low quality research articles, but rather to weigh each article’s flaws and strength. It is therefore important to assess whether the overall study design of the chosen articles meet the study objectives (Greenhalgh 2010).

THEMATIC ANALYSIS
It is the most common approach to summarizing and synthesizing results in a literature review (Coughlan et al 2013). Thematic analysis is the searching across chosen articles to find repeated patterns of meaning. It is usually considered an important aspect of qualitative research. Moreover in qualitative researc...

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...e reviews are considered very important in research in research (Bartolucci and Hillegass 2010), other types of researches should not be repressed because they form the basis from which conclusions in reviews are based. In addition to all these it will not be possible to include a large number of studies in this study due to the timeframe apportioned for this study. Furthermore, not being able to access databases beyond that to which Oxford Brookes University is subscribed to could pose some restraints on the generalizability of the study.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN
This review will take 12 months to complete. Writing the proposal will begin by searching the databases for relevant literature to critical appraisal and finally writing up the review. Therefore a timeline showing the major milestone for this literature review will be constructed using a Gantt chart model.