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This is for the "Telemonitoring…" article

The purpose of this research is to determine if it is advantageous to employ electronic home monitoring (EHM) for heart failure patients. Advantageous is determined by whether or not additional costs and hospital visits could be reduced with this technology, and if it could increase the length of time between hospital visits.

The research questions in this study were implicit and stated in the form of three hypotheses. The first questioned whether or not lower costs, emergency room and hospital visits could be achieved with EHM, the second was whether or not quality of life and caregiver mastery could improve while lowering rates of depressive symptoms, and the final one wondered whether or not, the combination of EHM, caregiver mastery and informal social support could decrease the risk of readmission to hospitals.

The authors provided a lengthy description of the design of this study which involved a randomized clinical trial in which there was a control group and an intervention group, the latter of which utilized EHM. The researchers attempted to make all other factors equal between these groups, including facets related to their sample pool.

4) The method of data collection was largely quantitative in nature. Virtually everything that the researchers studied was quantifiable, from the number of hospital readmissions to emergency room visits, to rates of depressive symptoms to measures of caregiver mastery. The plethora of numbers involved in this research indicated that it was a quantitative study.

5) This was a retrospective study because the authors gathered empirical evidence first and then analyzed it for any particular trends or for the answers to their research questions. They looked back at the data to draw conclusions, making the study retrospective.

6) The evidence that this journal is peered reviewed consists of the fact that this study was "reviewed and approved by the institutional review board at the participating hospital" (Schwarz et al., 2008, p. 19) and that the journal it was published in, Progress in Cardiovascular Nursing, has a lengthy editorial board of some 50 odd members.

7) There was not necessarily a conflict of interest in this study, or any way for the researchers to profit financially from it. However, it would have been extremely useful for analyzing the cost involved between the control and the intervention group to have quantified the number of doctor visits (and costs associated with them) between these two groups. Health care costs exist outside of hospital settings.

This is for the other article.

8) The purpose of the research was to determine how caregivers make decisions related to family members who are dealing with heart failure

9) The research question for this study is explicitly stated in this article. It is: "How do caregivers of family members with HF make decisions?."

10) The authors of this study did offer a design of it. They used a qualitative design with grounded theory methods to elucidate the decision making process of family caregivers of HF patients. They interviewed 20 caregivers over a one year period beginning in 2008 from different stages of heart disease. They then used a triangulation theory to form a theoretical model for the process of decision making for this condition

11) The aspects of this study that are qualitative are the fact that data was gathered from the means of open-ended interview questions. There were no calculations involved in this method of obtaining data, as participants responded to broad questions about their processes of dealing with this issue.

12) This was a prospective study, since it involved identifying trends that were taking place during the duration of the study to account for a previously denoted goal. Similar to this one, most prospective studies involve watching a group over a lengthy time period to denote observations related to some common objective.

13) This journal has an editorial board of seven members, all of whom have a PhD in some field of nursing. This fact is the most convincing one that this is a peer-reviewed journal, as are many of the quotations from various other nursing professionals regarding the veracity and accuracy of the information contained within the journal on its website.