Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to review a scientific article that describes a medical study. The authors of the paper selected for the purpose aim to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination concerning improving the health of children when compared to infants who did not receive immunization. To that end, they perform a study across the states of Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oregon, having the mothers of home-schooled children fill out questionnaires that described the health of their charges. The results show a decreased incidence of diseases such as chickenpox and whooping cough but increased rates of other conditions.
Literature Review
The authors provide a literature review in the introduction of the paper, using it to describe the situation that surrounds vaccination. The selection includes recent literature and is sufficiently broad for the investigation. The sources are appropriate, describing vaccination and the causes of the disorders mentioned in the study. There does not appear to be evidence of bias, as evidence provided for both sides of the vaccination debate.
The Relevance of the Research
The role of vaccination in the occurrence of neurodevelopmental disorders, which have become more common recently, is a viable alley of investigation for the issue. According to Mawson et al. (2017), factors that encompass the entirety of the United States, such as agricultural chemicals and vaccination, are currently being investigated. Furthermore, the authors seek to examine the influence immunization may have on the development of a variety of other conditions, such as pneumonia.
As mentioned above, vaccination is a contentious topic, and the process may have indirect consequences. However, investigating the outcomes of individual vaccines is a challenging and costly process, as most children tend to get full immunization treatments, which makes it difficult to separate the effects of various agents. The research conducted by the authors serves as a starting point, evaluating the overall outcomes of vaccination and determining issues that can then be investigated and linked to a specific factor.
Design and Procedures
The authors describe their study as an original cross-sectional survey that was impossible to randomize due to the anonymity of responses. As such, the research is non-experimental, as the scientists did not introduce any changes to the environment. The mothers of respondents were asked to fill out the questionnaires to standardize the responses and include additional data on the pregnancy stage of the child’s life and their birth history.
The study includes 666 homeschooled children aged between 6 and 12 whose information was submitted via 415 survey forms. The majority of them are white, and the mothers tend to be married college graduates with average income and follow Christianity. The families were indirectly contacted via statewide and local homeschool organizations and submitted anonymous responses. 405 of the children were vaccinated, and the other 261 were not.
The authors state that their aim was not to obtain a representative sample but to collect enough responses to be able to test for significant differences between categories. The selection is likely sufficient for a pilot study, and the results obtained from the research deserve further investigation. It is also unlikely to display bias other than the recall bias mentioned in the paper, as the children in the study come from highly similar backgrounds.
The Practicality of the Work
The authors intend their study to be a pilot work, which other research uses as a starting point for hypotheses. The findings of the association of otitis and pneumonia in children with vaccination, as well as the conclusions about the incidence of NDD, can serve as foundations for further investigations. Furthermore, the research calls attention to specific vaccines, such as PCV-7, and their side effects, providing a foundation for particular research questions.
However, the research does not have practical implications due to its broad aims and unreliable data. The information was collected from the mothers’ reports and cannot be supported with clinical data on the children in question. In addition, the sample is not representative, which limits the strength of the evidence and restricts the practical applications of the conclusion. Additional research with more credible data is necessary before the findings can be applied to practical policies.
Improvements for the Study
A significant limitation of the study that was described by the authors is the lack of funding. With additional resources, the scope of the program could be expanded, and a larger sample could be obtained. In addition, the research could use a broader range of respondents if it had access to vaccination records. The current range of respondents offers limited accuracy and usefulness of information that would be improved with more extensive coverage.
The research would also benefit from greater consideration for the use of various vaccines. Mawson et al. (2017) devote a section of the paper to the adverse effects of the PCV-7 vaccine, but according to Hortal, Meny, Estevan, Arrietta, and Laurani (2015), the newer PCV-13 vaccine considerably reduces the occurrence rates for pneumonia, a finding that is omitted in the latter study. Lastly, additional factors were only mentioned for the incidence of NDD, and considering the circumstances that cause the other complications would benefit the study’s accuracy.
Article Writing
The article is written in a straightforward, easy to comprehend fashion. However, the Results section suffers from an overabundance of in-text insertions of mathematical data that make it challenging to read and analyze the results, particularly to someone who is not used to the symbols and definitions used in scientific papers. The authors compensate for this difficulty by structuring the information into a number of tables that make it easier to locate results that interest the reader.
The article’s structure is close to standard, with the introduction being followed by a description of the methods, a summary of the results, a discussion of the findings, and a section on the limitations of the study. The article ends with a conclusion that summarizes the results and a list of related details such as competing interests and acknowledgments. A separate literature review heading is absent, and the section is absorbed into the introduction, with the works being paraphrased instead of citations.
Further Research
The article is a pilot study that was not intended to achieve conclusive results that could be used to support the implementation of practical measures. The aim was to establish a variety of foundations for further research, and the paper succeeds in doing that. The primary topics for investigation would be the influence of specific vaccines on the incidence of otitis and pneumonia as well as neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
Conclusion
The paper is a broad study on the effects of vaccination on the health of children. Its narrow selection of respondents and unreliable data sources make it unusable for practical applications, but it establishes a variety of objectives for further investigations. The results of the study could be improved with greater funding and focus on additional factors that cause the disorders investigated in the study, but that task can be left to research that follows. Overall, the article has some weaknesses but deserves consideration and further investigation into its conclusions.
References
Hortal, M., Meny, M., Estevan, M., Arrieta, F., & Laurani, H. (2015). Effect of 7 and 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccines different number of doses for pneumonia control in 2008 and 2010 birth cohort children. World Journal of Vaccines, 5, 37-42.
Mawson, A. R., Ray, B. D., Bhuiyan, A. R., & Jacob, B. (2017). Pilot comparative study on the health of vaccinated and unvaccinated 6-to 12-year-old US children. Journal of Translational Sciences, 3(3), 1-12.