Retention of older adults in the Cardiovascular Health Study

¶ … Strotmeyer et al. (2010) research regarding long-term retention of older adults within a given health study. This review will examine the content and structure of this article to determine its practical applications and to reveal key learning points that may be used in future examinations regarding the same topic.

Article Concept

Firstly the aim of this study was to examine the aging population as its demographical influence is described as important and impactful. The object of this study was to understand the idea of retention as it applies to these older people. The article's definition of the word retention is cumbersome and requires some deep thinking to understand the complicated words of the definition. The authors defined retention as "retaining surviving participants enrolled at baseline for subsequent assessments in a longitudinal cohort study." The word "baseline" is never adequately contextualized in this article, requiring the reader to insert some assumptions.

The main aim of this research was to examine another large study and determine how old people maintain their relationships to longitudinal studies. The authors essentially documented their investigation into redefining and understanding the idea of retention and how it factors with the ability to maintain long lasting studies.

Analysis

The article gathered data on certain variable such as age, sex, health habits and other descriptive characteristics. This data was ordered in several figures that presented the odds of certain results happening within the study. The data itself was not statistically modified with power analysis because the research did not call for such action. Since the main aim of this research was purely descriptive, there was no need to manipulate data for any type of modeling or statistical inference.

The article was merely a study of a study and reveals many obvious truths such as old people become unreliable as they age. The idea of retention is satisfactorily defined and explored in this article which was it set out to do, making the research successful at that level. The CHS is a limited study with less than 1500 participants making the study invalid in the larger scheme of things due to this myopic and single minded investigation.

There was no need for a power analysis because the statistical inference of the data did not call for such inquiry. The sample size was not large enough nor specific enough to generalize the findings. The criteria of being included in this study was explicitly stated, meeting the desired criteria set out by the authors. The intervention of investigating the CHS study was announced clearly within this article and the statistical statistics used were appropriate and useful in drawing conclusions.

The outcomes presented in this article were valid but slightly unreliable due to the investigation of only one study, that being the CHS. The literature was discussed in appropriate manner and the levels of evidence are also clearly presented. This study really only confirms that fact that older people are harder to manage as they reach closer to their death and it should be expected that they are not retained in longitudinal studies.