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| LETTER TO EDITOR |
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| Year : 2018 | Volume
: 3
| Issue : 1 | Page : 63-64 |
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Critical comment on knowledge and attitude regarding swine flu among dental house surgeons in Belagavi city: A cross-sectional study
Radha Saini
Centre for Nursing Research and Community Empowerment, Mother Mary's Institute of Nursing, Hoshiarpur, Punjab, India
| Date of Web Publication | 19-Jun-2018 |
Correspondence Address:
Radha Saini
Centre for Nursing Research and Community Empowerment, Mother Mary's Institute of Nursing, Nasrala, Hoshiarpur, Punjab
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/bjhs.bjhs_39_17
How to cite this article:
Saini R. Critical comment on knowledge and attitude regarding swine flu among dental house surgeons in Belagavi city: A cross-sectional study. BLDE Univ J Health Sci 2018;3:63-4 |
How to cite this URL:
Saini R. Critical comment on knowledge and attitude regarding swine flu among dental house surgeons in Belagavi city: A cross-sectional study. BLDE Univ J Health Sci [serial online] 2018 [cited 2021 Apr 14];3:63-4. Available from: https://www.bldeujournalhs.in/text.asp?2018/3/1/63/234646 |
Sir,
I read the article “Knowledge and attitude regarding swine flu among dental house surgeons in Belagavi city: A cross-sectional study” published in BLDE Univ J Health Sci 2017; 2: 50-4[1] with great interest. I appreciate the authors in conducting this study; however, I have a few concerns. In the subjects and methods section, the authors have written that cross-sectional questionnaire study was conducted among dental house surgeons of Belagavi city. How these 133 study participants were selected using convenient sampling? Were they all from a single hospital or many hospitals across Belagavi city? In cross-sectional studies, the aim is to estimate the prevalence of unknown parameter(s) from the target population using a random sample. Hence, adequate sample size is needed to estimate the population prevalence with a good precision.[2] If the sample size is too small, the investigator may not be able to answer the study question.
Authors mention that “The study was explained to the subjects beforehand and volunteered participants were asked to assemble in a lecture hall on a predetermined date and time, according to convenience of subjects.” When the research participants were told regarding the purpose of the study beforehand and collectively asked to assemble in a lecture hall on a predetermined date and time, the participants have got the full freedom to study about the research question under investigation. The authors gave them full autonomy to empower themselves on the research question and hence giving distortion to the final results besides giving birth to biasism. Authors should have been very careful while conducting this study. What is the time frame of the conduction of this study? How many days gap was there between subjects being explained about the research by the authors and the final date of data collection by the latter?
Further, the authors mention that “A pilot study was conducted among forty subjects to confirm the validity.” Were these participants from the same hospital where the main research study was conducted and how many days before the conduction of main research was this pilot study conducted? Basically, validity is defined as the extent to which a concept is accurately measured in a quantitative study and if the authors state that they conducted a pilot study to confirm validity then which type of validity they intended to measure–content validity, criterion validity, or construct validity? In the “statistical method used” section of the ABSTRACT, it is incorrectly mentioned that “Reliability of the questionnaire was checked using Cronbach's alpha which was found to be 78.4” whereas in the main study, the reliability was found to be 0.78 by the authors.
A “Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices” survey is a representative study of a specific population that aims to collect data on what is known, believed and done in relation to a particular topic.[3] As the authors undertook a knowledge and attitude survey, it would have been more meaningful if apart from gender, other independent variables such as age, place of work or posting, place of dwelling-urban or rural, dietary habits-vegetarian or nonvegetarian, and source of previous knowledge could have been investigated as all these variables have an influence on the knowledge and attitudes of the study participants toward swine flu. To investigate the relationship of knowledge and attitudes with independent variables, independent t-tests, Mann–Whitney Test, Chi-square test could have been used. Furthermore, in this study, only frequency of wrong and correct answers is calculated which is not meaningful and the main table showing the exact relationship or association of knowledge with attitudes of dental house surgeons is missing. [Table 2] needs to be put in results section instead of discussion. Reference number 8 and 9 do not contribute toward discussion of the research paper. In [Table 2] its written “Knowledge based” whereas the table has both knowledge and attitude questions.
Financial support and sponsorship
Nil.
Conflicts of interest
There are no conflicts of interest.
| References | |  |
| 1. | Nerli S, Hugar SM, Gokhale NS, Kohli D, Uppin C, Badkar CM. Knowledge and attitude regarding swine flu among dental house surgeons in Belagavi city: A cross-sectional study. BLDE Univ J Health Sci 2017;2:50-4.  [Full text] |
| 2. | Pourhoseingholi MA, Vahedi M, Rahimzadeh M. Sample size calculation in medical studies. Gastroenterol Hepatol Bed Bench 2013;6:14-7. [ PUBMED] |
| 3. | Zahedi L, Sizemore E, Malcolm S, Grossniklaus E, Nwosu O. Knowledge, attitudes and practices regarding cervical cancer and screening among Haitian health care workers. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2014;11:11541-52. [ PUBMED] |
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