Evaluation of the Characteristics of the Sample of Participants

Introduction

The study sample has included gender or sex as one of its major characteristics which is commendable. It is appreciated that the project has selected a sample size that is proportional to the study population from the Australian Government database. That is important as a representative sample guarantees generalization of findings (Banerjee & Chaudhury, 2010). However, the ratio of men to women is not proportional to the sample size. The women are marginally more than men which make it skewed towards one particular gender. On a positive note, the other vital characteristic of the sample is age cohort. It is commendable for the project to have a systematic sampling procedure where there are two levels of sampling, the pre-exclusion cohort and the study cohort (Gillam et al., 2017). When it comes to the sample size, it was tremendous for the researchers to arrive at a convenient sample size of three groups with MoM THAs and thus making the analysis simple (Gillam et al., 2017). The source of the study sample (Australian Government Department of Veterans’ Affairs) is also a reliable and convenient source for the database obtained for the sample participants. However, it is apparent that the researchers have not included more demographic characteristics of the participants. There ought to be more descriptions such as social status, education, and race even if they were not that relevant for the targeted data collected. By and large, the characteristics of the sample are representative enough to guarantee successful data collection and make the research findings reliable.

Conclusion

It is important to describe the actual study participants because it will be able to communicate the quality of the whole research project since they are the ones to provide the data needed in the research. The characteristics such as sample size, age, gender, and race among others should be described so that the research can also be replicated by others.