Chapter 8 Part 4在线视频

Part four

Case Analysis

After we have learned the structure and content knowledge

and the useful writing tips for the Methods

Let's move to the analysis of 2 sample articles

chosen from top medical journals

By analyzing how their Methods sections are developed and written

you would be much clearer about how those strategies

and techniques are employed in practice

Case 1

An Observational Study

Case 1 is a prospective cohort study

published in The Lancet

in 2020 on COVID-19 mortality in patients with cancer

on chemotherapy or other anticancer treatments

As is written in the Introduction section

the research questions or the aims of the study were

“to describe the clinical and demographic characteristics

and COVID-19 outcomes in this cohort of patients

with cancer and symptomatic COVID-19

and attempted to assess how the presence of cancer

and the receipt of cytotoxic chemotherapy

and other anticancer treatments

affects the COVID-19 disease phenotyp

Now let's first look at the Methods

section of this paper

in terms of its structure and content

Here is the overall organization of this article

In its Methods section you can see

the authors followed

the generic structure and answered the 3 questions

What was used

What was done

How was it done

in 4 subsections

with the corresponding subtitles

“Study design and participants”

“Data collection”

“UKCCMP data processing and analysis”

and “Statistical analysis and data visualization”

Meanwhile

different from the generic structure in which

the study subjects or participants

and the study design are separated into two subsections

this article employed a condensed way

that they are combined into one single subsection

the first subsection “Study design and participants”

This is often seen

in the similar type of studies published in The Lancet

The first subsection consists of 3 paragraphs

answering “what was used”

In para.1

the authors gave a brief introduction of the UK

Coronavirus Cancer Monitoring Project

database

With the database being “a public health surveillance registry

to support rapid clinical decision making”

they also stated

that the cohort study was approved

by the appropriate committee at the institutional level

In para.2

the study subjects

patients with active cancer on chemotherapy

and symptomatic COVID-19 were clearly explained

The researchers first gave the information

about settings and time span

then well-defined patients

with “symptomatic COVID-19”

and with “active cancer” respectively

where they actually reported

the inclusion and exclusion criteria

In para.3

the study clearly categorized stages of tumor

and then defined whether the patients

were on chemotherapy and other anticancer treatments

As a whole

the key terms about study subjects in the title

“COVID-19 mortality in patients with cancer

on chemotherapy or other anticancer treatments”

have been sufficiently specified

one by one and step by step

achieving high clarity

The second subsection “Data collection” has only one paragraph

partly responding to

“what was done and how was it done”

In this single paragraph

the authors described

how the prospective data collection was done

including data report

data entry and data assessment

The roles of both “a COVID-19 emergency

response reporting individual”

and “a local emergency response reporting group”

and how they have worked

have been presented

Additionally

the electronic data capture software system

used for their data entry was also introduced

in facilitating details

Finally this paragraph ended up

with the criteria used for determining the COVID-19

severity category and the cancer type

The third subsection

“UKCCMP data processing and analysis”

is made up of 2 paragraphs

In para.1

the authors clearly introduced how the data were transferred

through “the Compute and Storage for Life Science

at University of Birmingham

In para.2

they further reported details about how the data were

curated and annotated

They also shared with readers about the important functions

of the automatic workflow system

and the CaStLeS in the delivery of data analytics

The fourth subsection

“Statistical analysis and data visualisation”

has one single paragraph

In this paragraph

the authors first stated the two main procedures

in data observation

and briefly described the statistical tests

used for the analysis

Since these are well-known tests

they don't need to be referenced

The researchers then stated a priori

and included the statistical software used

to perform the analysis

with the version number provided

The P values for differences of statistical significance

were also stated

and the 95% confidence interval was calculated

Besides

subgroup analyses of patients on chemotherapy

were explained with adequate reasons

which help readers to understand the design

All in all

this article described statistical methods

with enough detail

to enable a knowledgeable reader

with access to the original data

The fifth subsection

“Role of the funding source”

is a required section for reporting conflicts of interest

The Lancet provides authors with detailed online guidelines

for writing this subsection in a given format

You can refer to

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses in The Lancet

formatting guidelines for more information

Next let's analyze the language features of its Methods

The first language feature is Consistency with Other Sections

In the last subsection of the Methods at the beginning

In the last subsection of the Methods

at the beginning

the very first sentence of the paragraph was written in accordance

with the research

aims given at the end of the Introduction

The same key terms were used

to achieve the consistency

between the Methods and the Introduction section

“Anticancer treatment”

was used in both sections

The verb “affect” in the research aim

was changed into its noun form “effect”

in the Methods but with the same meaning

The sentence we have seen just now

in the 4th subsection

is also a good example of transition between paragraphs

This sentence is a topic sentence for readers

to be ready for the following statistical analysis

The third feature is Precise word choice

In this article

you may find the following verbs and phrases

especially prepositional and adverbial

are precisely and properly used

in the Methods

to report exactly what was done and how was it done

In the study design

“launch”

“design” and “approve” are 3 main verbs

“The database …was launched”

In English

to launch a large and important activity

means to start it

To state that this cohort study had obtained approval

the verb “approve”

and the phrase “in accordance with” were used

and are frequently used in similar context

In terms of phrases

“with the support of”

and “according to” are naturally used with the preceding verbs

“At an institutional level”

is smartly selected

for its simplicity in expressing

that the approval of the study was also obtained

from local information governance institutions

You can also note the verbs and phrases

used for the inclusion and exclusion criteria of the participants

“Patients with a certain disease”

is commonly used for defining the study subjects

Phrases like

“were eligible for”

“were deemed to have”

“was positive for”

“were defined as”

were used for describing the inclusion criteria in various ways

while “were not included in”

“were not part of”

were used for the exclusion

In UKCCMP data processing and analysis subsection

the specific action verbs for data processing and analysis

“curate”

“annotate”

“analyze”

“disseminate” are worth mentioning

“curate” means organize usually organize exhibition

“annotate” means add notes

“disseminate” means distribute

usually distribute information or knowledge

In this subsection

the nouns for data processing are also well-chosen

“The deployment” refers to the organization and positioning of resources

and “the delivery” refers to

the bringing of sth. to another place

Those words were employed in the context of data analysis

to indicate precisely what was done

The fourth feature is Verb Tense

You can find the Methods in this article

are written mainly in past tense

describing completed actions

Take this paragraph in “Data collection” for instance

In most sentences

the specific action verbs for collecting data

were mainly used in simple past tense

while in the last two sentences

in the clauses directed by “as long as…”

past perfect tense was used

“had been identified”

because the action “identify a positive SARS-CoV-2 test”

was actually done before the action “UKCCMP encouraged

all local reporting sites to enter data”

in the main clause

Similarly

in the last sentence

the action “identify treatment and outcomes”

was completed before the action “update the data fields”

One exception is the verb tense

used in the data analysis

In the third subsection

the data processing and analysis

the verbs are mainly used in present tense

In this subsection we can say

that the date are curated

to avoid duplications and errors

then annotated with further information

before they can be analysed and disseminated

CaStLeS enables delivery of national

and local analytics with a dynamic level of granularity

And you may also find enables, two “enables”

The fourth feature is Use of Parentheses

You can also see parentheses were used in some sentences

for not breaking up the flow of the main message

Examples of parentheses

in Methods of this article are as follows

The types of details

that were placed in parentheses include

Classified examples

Specific clinical definitions or terms

Additional explanations

Abbreviations

And software names

And version or release numbers in parentheses

As in the two sentence examples

The fifth feature is Point of View and Voices

Another important language feature is

the point of view and voices

The Methods section of this article employed

both point of the experiment

and point of the experimenter we

The former point of the experiment

however

dominated all the subsections

That means most sentences in Methods

were written in passive voice

as shown in this example paragraph

All the 3 sentences in this paragraph

are written from point of the experiment

As you can see

“Stages of tumour”

“Patients”

“Non-palliative chemotherapy” are the subjects

thus making the topic

or the precise information prominent in the sentence

Another advantage is

writing a certain subsection or paragraph

only from one point of view

point of the experiment

or only in the passive voice

can help achieve objectivity and high consistency

within this subsection or paragraph

to reduce the dullness of writing the entire Methods section

only from point of the experiment

the authors also used “we” twice

one in the beginning sentence

of the fourth subsection

Statistical analysis

and the other in the last sentence of the same subsection

It is also probably because

the beginning sentence of the fourth subsection

was expected to correspond with the research aim in Introduction

The last feature is length

At last is about the length

The total word count of this section is 1,158

spreading over five subsections