| Course | HS840 Advanced Health Research and Analysis Methods |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 2 |
| Paper type | Research question critique |
| Length | About 1,100 words, 7 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | Doctor of Health Science (DHSc) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for HS840 Unit 2
From "Improve Access" to a Countable Question: A Unit 2 Research Question Critique of a Same-Day Contraception Proposal
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
HS840: Advanced Health Research and Analysis Methods
Unit 2 Research Question Critique
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The network, its quality director and its figures are composite; the guidance, criteria and studies cited are real.
The Original Question
The question came from the network's quality director after a meeting about long waits for contraceptive appointments: "Does same-day LARC improve access to contraception?" It is a good instinct and a poor research question. Long-acting reversible contraception (LARC), meaning intrauterine devices and the contraceptive implant, is highly effective (Winner et al., 2012), and requiring a second visit for insertion loses many patients between visits (Bergin et al., 2012). The director's interest is well founded. The task of this unit is to turn it into a question a study could answer.
Pass One: Terms a Stranger Could Read Two Ways
Same-day LARC. This could mean insertion at the visit where a patient first asks, insertion at any visit without a separate counseling appointment, or same-day insertion only of implants, which require less equipment than IUDs. It could also mean a policy on paper or a service that clinics actually deliver.
Improve. Improve compared with what? With the same clinics before the change, with other clinics that have not changed, or with a target? A question without a comparison cannot be tested.
Access. Access could mean the number of insertions, the share of patients who request a method and receive it, the time between request and insertion, the distance patients travel or patients' own sense that care was available. Each is a different outcome measured in a different way.
Contraception. All contraception, or only LARC? If the intervention succeeds partly by shifting patients from pills to implants, a broad outcome would hide the effect, and a narrow one might be mistaken for an improvement in access generally.
Implicitly, the question also leaves out who is studied and when. A question about adolescents in school-based clinics and a question about adults in family medicine would need different consent rules, different outcome windows and different comparisons, yet both fit the director's sentence. The same is true of time. Insertions completed within a week of request and insertions completed within six months answer different questions about access, since the longer window counts patients who eventually return but says nothing about those whose plans changed while they waited. None of these gaps is a flaw in the director's thinking; each is a decision that has not yet been made, and a study cannot begin until all of them are.
Pass Two: Rewriting, With Each Change Annotated
Same-day LARC becomes "access to insertion of an implant or IUD at the visit where the patient requests it, delivered by trained clinicians with devices stocked on site." This names the service and requires that it be operating, not merely allowed. The annotation: a policy without stocked devices or trained clinicians would test paperwork, not service.
Improve acquires a comparison: "compared with the same clinics' usual two-visit pathway, with clinics starting same-day service on a schedule." The annotation: the network plans to roll out the service across its twelve clinics during the year because training capacity is limited, so a staggered start is already given; using it as the comparison costs nothing.
Access is narrowed to a primary outcome: "the proportion of patients requesting an implant or IUD who have it inserted within 30 days of the request." The annotation: this outcome can be counted in every period for every clinic from the electronic health record, since requests are documented and insertions are billed. Time from request to insertion becomes a secondary outcome. Patients' experience of counseling becomes another secondary outcome, measured with a short validated scale, because a service that raises insertions by pressuring patients would be a failure even if the numbers rose.
An outcome that can be counted the same way in every clinic and every period is worth more to this study than one that matters more but can only be measured once.
Contraception becomes "implant or IUD," and a secondary outcome tracks any contraceptive method started within 30 days, so a shift between methods can be seen.
Population and period are added: "patients aged 15 to 49 seen at any of the network's twelve primary care clinics who request an implant or IUD, over fourteen months."
The revised question reads: Among patients aged 15 to 49 who request an implant or IUD at a twelve-clinic primary care network, does access to same-day insertion, introduced to clinics in a staggered schedule, increase the proportion who receive the method within 30 days of request, compared with the usual two-visit pathway, over fourteen months?
Pass Three: Testing the Question
The FINER criteria ask whether a question is feasible, interesting, novel, ethical and relevant (Hulley et al., 2013).
Feasible. Yes. The network already plans the rollout, requests and insertions are recorded, and the network sees about [650] requests a year based on its scheduling data, enough to estimate a proportion in each clinic and period.
Interesting. Yes, to the network and to other primary care systems. Most published work on same-day insertion comes from specialty family planning clinics, not general primary care.
Novel. Partly. A cluster randomized trial in reproductive health clinics found that training clinicians in LARC counseling and insertion increased the share of women selecting LARC from 17 to 28 percent (Harper et al., 2015). The proposed study asks a narrower question about the same-day pathway in a different setting.
Ethical. Yes, if counseling remains patient-centered and removal is available on request. Because LARC has been promoted coercively in the past to some groups of women, the study must measure patients' experience of counseling and not treat uptake alone as success (Gubrium et al., 2016).
Relevant. Yes. Federal practice recommendations support same-day initiation when pregnancy can be reasonably excluded (Curtis et al., 2024), but practice in primary care lags.
The Design the Question Implies
The revised question names clinics as the unit that changes and a staggered schedule as the comparison. A stepped-wedge cluster randomized design follows: clinics cross from the two-visit pathway to same-day service in a randomized order, and every clinic contributes periods under both conditions. The question can no longer ask whether same-day service improves access in specialty clinics, whether it reduces unintended pregnancy, which would need a longer follow-up and much larger sample, or whether individual clinicians who prefer same-day insertion do better. Each of those is a separate question for a separate study.
References
Bergin, A., Tristan, S., Terplan, M., Gilliam, M. L., & Whitaker, A. K. (2012). A missed opportunity for care: Two-visit IUD insertion protocols inhibit placement. Contraception, 86(6), 694-697. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.contraception.2012.05.011
Curtis, K. M., Nguyen, A. T., Tepper, N. K., Zapata, L. B., Snyder, E. M., Hatfield-Timajchy, K., Kortsmit, K., Cohen, M. A., & Whiteman, M. K. (2024). U.S. selected practice recommendations for contraceptive use, 2024. MMWR Recommendations and Reports, 73(3), 1-77. https://doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.rr7303a1
Gubrium, A. C., Mann, E. S., Borrero, S., Dehlendorf, C., Fields, J., Geronimus, A. T., Gómez, A. M., Harris, L. H., Higgins, J. A., Kimport, K., Luker, K., Luna, Z., Mamo, L., Roberts, D., Romero, D., & Sisson, G. (2016). Realizing reproductive health equity needs more than long-acting reversible contraception (LARC). American Journal of Public Health, 106(1), 18-19. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2015.302900
Harper, C. C., Rocca, C. H., Thompson, K. M., Morfesis, J., Goodman, S., Darney, P. D., Westhoff, C. L., & Speidel, J. J. (2015). Reductions in pregnancy rates in the USA with long-acting reversible contraception: A cluster randomised trial. The Lancet, 386(9993), 562-568. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62460-0
Hulley, S. B., Cummings, S. R., Browner, W. S., Grady, D. G., & Newman, T. B. (2013). Designing clinical research (4th ed.). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Winner, B., Peipert, J. F., Zhao, Q., Buckel, C., Madden, T., Allsworth, J. E., & Secura, G. M. (2012). Effectiveness of long-acting reversible contraception. New England Journal of Medicine, 366(21), 1998-2007. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1110855
HS840 Unit 2 instructions, in plain terms
This unit generally asks learners to critique a research question, either their own or one supplied, and revise it into a form that is clear, answerable and suited to doctoral research. Expect four to six pages. Strong critiques identify ambiguous terms, missing comparisons and unmeasurable outcomes before rewriting anything. Each change should come with a reason, so the reader sees why the revision is better rather than simply different. Most prompts ask for an established framework, often FINER or PICO, to test the final question. Instructors frequently expect the critique to end by naming the study design the revised question implies, which links this unit to later work on design and sampling. Supporting evidence for feasibility and relevance should come from published studies, guidelines or the setting's own data.
How this HS840 Unit 2 example is built
The paper quotes the director's question and grants that its instinct is sound, citing evidence on LARC effectiveness and losses under two-visit protocols. Pass one examines each term and adds a paragraph on how age group and time window change the question. Pass two rewrites the terms one by one, with annotations explaining why stocked devices and trained clinicians are required, why the network's staggered rollout supplies the comparison and why a records-based outcome beats burnout-style surveys. The highlighted sentence argues for an outcome countable in every period. Pass three applies feasibility, interest, novelty, ethics and relevance in order. The last section derives a stepped-wedge design and lists the questions it can no longer answer, including effects on unintended pregnancy.
Reading the HS840 Unit 2 grading rubric
Critique papers are typically scored on identification of weaknesses, quality of revision, application of a framework, use of evidence and writing. Identifying weaknesses earns points when the critique names specific words and explains the ambiguity rather than calling the question vague. Revision points depend on annotations; instructors want to see the reasoning behind each change. Framework application is rewarded when each criterion is tested with evidence instead of a simple yes. Using published studies and guidelines to establish feasibility and relevance raises the evidence score. Ending with the implied design often earns credit in organization or synthesis, depending on the rubric. APA formatting, clear headings and a final question that reads as one sentence complete the grade.
HS840 Unit 2 help: mistakes that cost points
Many critiques jump straight to a polished question without showing how they got there, which hides the reasoning instructors grade. Another error is keeping a broad outcome like access because it sounds important, even though it cannot be measured consistently. Some learners apply FINER as a checklist of yes answers. Others forget to say who is studied and over what period. Revised questions that run to three sentences are hard to use. If the question you were assigned concerns a different service, perhaps diabetes education or fall prevention, send it with your instructor's criteria, and a critique can be prepared that shows each revision and its reason.
Get an HS840 Unit 2 example written to your instructions
The raw material is a vague question, supplied by the Unit 2 assignment or taken from your own earlier draft; add the rubric and the framework your course uses. In return: every ambiguous term listed, each revision's trade-off stated, and the design the final question implies named outright. Expect it in 24-48h; a first custom sample carries no charge. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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HS840 Unit 2 questions, answered
How narrow is too narrow?
Narrow enough to answer, broad enough to matter. A question limited to one clinic's afternoon sessions is answerable and uninteresting; one about all clinicians everywhere is interesting and unanswerable. The sample settles on twelve clinics in one network over ten months, then states what that scope cannot generalize to. Stating the loss is what makes narrowing defensible.
Should the question include the design?
Not usually in the wording, but the design should follow from it without argument. The sample's final question names the population, the intervention's staggered timing, the outcome and the period; a reader can see from those elements that clinics will be compared across periods. Where a rubric wants the design named inside the question, a short phrase does it, though the logic should already be present.
Where can I find a free HS840 Unit 2 sample paper?
This page holds the complete Unit 2 research question critique, turning a vague question about same-day contraception into a countable question with a clear design.
Why is completed insertion the primary outcome rather than access?
Access can mean several things, while insertion within 30 days of request can be counted the same way in every clinic and period from records, which the design requires.
Does the critique ignore patients' experience?
No. Counseling experience becomes a secondary outcome measured with a validated scale, because raising insertion numbers through pressure would count as failure.