Table 3 Appraisal strategy
From: Exploring what works in mental health education for health profession students: a realist review
Level | Description |
|---|---|
High | Relevance: Papers, which have high relevance to the realist synthesis. Research questions and aim are highly matched to the review questions. Findings are clearly described. Richness: Intervention, methods and participants are richly described. Descriptions allow for contexts and mechanisms to be gleaned from the paper and can greatly contribute theory refinement and development. The paper describes conceptually thick data relating to CMOC which provides deep insights relating to richness. This paper is a key informant to programme theories. Rigour: The paper utilises highly rigorous methodological approaches such as RCT and looks for long term outcomes. |
Moderate | Relevance: Papers, which are moderately relevant to the realist synthesis. The primary research is moderately matched to the review questions and theories. Description of intervention, methods and participants may have some gaps. Richness: Mechanism and context extraction may be more difficult and details included may limit identification of mechanisms. Paper describes some potentially thick or thin data relating to CMOC which is moderately useful for richness. Rigour: Paper describes the methodology clearly and follows a framework which is described in some detail. Findings may be described quite clearly, but with insufficient detail to be of high rigour or may be unclear described. |
Low | Papers in this category meet inclusion criteria but the quality of description of methods and outcomes are poor so they may not be fully credible and are low in terms of rigour. Those with low rigour which contain rich information about contexts, mechanism or conceptualising outcomes, which can be used for theory refinement should remain in the synthesis. Data does not describe, or only references partly thin data relating to CMOC which is not sufficient for richness. |
Exclude | Papers that do not correspond to initial programme theories or do not at all describe contexts or mechanisms, hence do not contribute to theory refinement. |