Example

Hey guys,

Here is an example from an article I am using for another class, I think it can give us the general guidelines of what we need to turn in on Friday. This has two categories METHOD and PROCEDURES AND MEASURES. By the looks of things I think that it is a combination of the two that we need. I hope this will help.

METHOD
Participants
As part of a larger, NIH-funded study, 165 children, 91 with SB and 74 developing
typically (control), were recruited from Houston, Toronto, and the surrounding
areas of these cities. Neurosurgeons and specialty clinics in Houston (Texas
Children’s Hospital and Memorial Herman Children’s Hospital) and Toronto
(Hospital for Sick Children) referred children born with SB. The children in the
control group were recruited primarily from well-baby clinics and through the
Pediatrics Department of the University of Texas at Houston. In Toronto, control
children were also recruited via advertisements in newspapers and flyers posted
at YMCA mother–infant programs.
The initial eligibility criteria of the study was that all children be under 7
months old, have a gestational age of at least 37 weeks, a normal birth weight,
and an APGAR score at 5 minutes of at least eight. Exclusionary criteria included
the presence of an uncontrollable seizure disorder, other known congenital
abnormalities, and significant sensory impairments, such as blindness or
deafness. Children were also excluded if their mothers were under 17 years of
age at the time of the child’s birth. In addition, children with SB were required
to be shunted for hydrocephalus and have a diagnosis of SB myelomeningocele
as supported by the medical record. Children in the control group were required
to be free of motor abnormalities.
The inclusion criteria were set so that each child would begin the study at 6
months of age and be assessed at five time points (6, 12, 18, 24, and 36 months
of age). However, due to an unexplained decline in the rate of births of children
with SB that has not persisted, the inclusion criteria were altered to permit the
entry of children up to 18 months of age, including those not yet shunted for hydrocephalus.
Thus, 41 of the 91 children with SB began the study late (8 at 12
months and 33 at 18 months of age). The remaining children in the study all began at the 6-month time point (SB = 50; all control = 74). Despite this change in
criteria, attrition for the overall study was quite low at 7%. The majority of the
children in the study had a minimum of three assessments, with all five assessments
obtained for over half the sample.
Table 1 provides descriptive data on gender, ethnicity, and SES, assessed with the
Hollingshead (1975) 4-factor scale. Therewas no statistically significant difference
in gender, _2(1,N= 165) = 3.27, p =.10. The greater representation of females in the
group of children with SB is consistent with the epidemiology of this disorder. The
chi square for all levels of ethnicity could not be computed because the samples for
African American, Asian, and Other ethnicities were too small. Nonetheless, a comparison
of Hispanic, Caucasian, and Other ethnicities yielded no statistically significant
differences, _2(1, N = 165) = 3.77, p =.16. The higher rate of Hispanics in the
group with SB is also consistent with the epidemiology of the disorder (Northrup&
Volick, 2000) and reflects the separate matching of theSBand comparison groups in
the two sites. Furthermore, as the Hispanic subgroup tends to be lower in SES, the
groups also differed on this dimension, t(154) = 5.89; p < .0001.
The group of children with SB were born with the most typical and severe form
of SB, myelomeningocele. Regarding the medical terms commonly used to describe
SB, 77 were shuntedhydrocephalus. Although the age of these study would be anticipated for most of the unshunted cases. Of those with shunts, the majority
(72%) had either no or one shunt revision by three years of age, while 28% had 2 to
5 revisions. There were 13 children with spinal lesions below T12 and 76 with spinal
lesions above L1, the differentiation at the thoracic level based on genetic
(Northrup & Volick, 2000) and neuropsychological research (Fletcher et al.,
2005). Children with SB were considered to have high level lesions if the lesion occurred
above L1 (versus below T12). Overall, this sample is epidemiologically
similar to school-aged samples from the same sites (Fletcher et al., 2005) although
the proportion of upper level lesions is somewhat lower.


Procedures and Measures


Children and their guardians completed a series of five laboratory visits over the
first 3 years of life (6, 12, 18, 26, and 36 months). The laboratory was a large, comfortable
room designed to resemble a family living room. In some cases when families
could not come to the laboratory without undue stress, home visits were arranged.
As part of an extensive battery for a larger project, basic demographic
information (sufficient to calculate a Hollingshead SES score) was collected, the
Bayley Scales of Infant Development–II (Bayley, 1993) was administered at every
visit, and the Preschool Language Scale–III (PLS–III; Zimmerman, Steiner, &
Pond, 1992) was administered at every visit from 12 to 36 months.
The Bayley Scales (1993) constitute one of the most widely accepted, comprehensive
measures of child development from 1 month to 4 years of age. It consists of
Mental and Motor Scales that are administered to the child, and a Behavior Scale, a
qualitative assessment that the examiner fills out after the visit is complete. The
Mental Scale evaluates a variety of cognitive, language, and social skills. Although
its emphasis is primarily on cognitive skills, at the young ages targeted by this instrument
the items are not devoid of sensorimotor requirements. For example, one item
administered to children 20 to 31 months of age requires the child to determine how
to place a string of beads into a tube with one open end and one pointed end. TheMotor
Scale evaluates skills requiring control of the grossandfinemotormusclegroups.
The scale does not differentiate between these two sets of skills, but assessesbroad
motor functioning. Childrenwhohave gross motor limitations,but strong fine motor
skills will earn higher scores than those with limitations in both areas, but lower than
those with strong skills in both areas. Bayley scores are typically reported in terms of
index scores. These are calculated by comparing the child’s rawscore to age-appropriate
norms. Index scores can vary from 50 to 150, with 100 being exactly average.
Index scores can be grouped into categories including Accelerated, Normal, Mildly
Delayed, and Significantly Delayed (Bayley, 1993).
The PLS–III (Zimmerman et al., 1992) measures early language development
in young children from birth to 83 months of age. It tests a range of language
skills, laying particular emphasis on Auditory Comprehension (AC, listening and
understanding) as opposed to Expressive Communication (EC, speech and communication)
skills. A scale for AC and one for EC skills are administered to the
child by the examiner. A total score is then calculated that reflects combined performance
on both the comprehension and expressive components. Similar to the
Bayley, raw scores are compared to age-related norms, yielding an index score that
can vary from 50 to 150 (100 being exactly average).