Article Critique on STDI

Infectious diseases are illnesses from pathogens, such as viruses, entering the body. Syphilis is an infectious and contagious disease whose persistence rate differs between sexual groups such as gays, bisexuals, and men who have sex with men (GBM). The qualitative paper by Nath et al. (2019, p.1) explores the attitudes and “syphilis-related knowledge around syphilis biomedical prevention options”, aiming to inform effective syphilis prevention strategies. This essay reviews the article by Nath et al. (2019) against Creswell & Creswell’s (2018) reliability and validity discussion. Further, it identifies the article’s strengths and weaknesses and describes the findings’ impact on clinical practice and policy formulation.

Validity and Reliability

Assessing validity in the research focuses on several determinants. First, Nath et al. (2019) triangulated data by collecting data from participants’ perspectives and interpretations, i.e., five transcripts from semi-structured interviews, to address the five themes of the research objectives. Therefore, the triangulation, by collecting different participants’ views, created validity for the study. Second, Nath et al. (2019) provide varied perspectives on themes that created the findings’ trustworthiness. For instance, they gave diverse perspectives regarding patients’ awareness of syphilis epidemiology. Third, the researchers’ member-checking step improved validity by using grounded theory to ensure conceptualizations originated from participants’ meanings and interpretations. Fourth, researchers reveal validity by recognizing biases created by face-to-face interviews and bias minimization by selecting interviewers from within and outside the gay community. Lastly, since the interviews took seven months, the timeline was long enough to ascertain data validity. However, the lack of peer debriefing and external auditors affects the overall validity.

Assessment of reliability focuses on four strategies. Cresswell & Cresswell (2018) note that checking transcripts for apparent mistakes, ensuring code meaning and definition remain unchanged, coordinated communication among coders, and cross-checking codes aid in reliability assessment. Nath et al. (2019) conducted an independent review of transcripts, familiarization with the data set (by coding team), axial coding for relationship identification, and selective coding for inter-category relationships. These actions reduced errors transcript errors, enabled coding consistency, and provided for intercoder agreement, enhancing qualitative reliability.

Strengths and Weaknesses

A vital strength of the study is the methodological rigor maintained by authors such that the empirical insights express a valid and trusted connection with emerging themes on syphilis attitudes and related knowledge, relationships, and empirical evidence across participants’ narratives on the issue of syphilis’s health literacy gap. Also, the authors provided sufficient evidence and in-depth discussion, with support from related studies, on the relationship between syphilis-related literacy, attitudes, health-related competing ideas, and syphilis PrEP medication concerns. Also, the study included participants from a diverse sample within the gay community, with varied traits such as age, STIs, income levels, and ethnicity.

One fundamental weakness presented in the study is the inconsistency between the research objective and the participants’ characteristics. While the study’s objective focused on the gay community of gays, bisexuals, and gay bisexual men, there were zero bisexual participants (Nath et al., 2019). Therefore, the study’s analytical insights lack the critical viewpoints of bisexual persons. The population utilized lacks bisexual men, which is a significant error in the author’s claim and questions the discussion and findings’ adaptability in a similar population. Also, the risk profile of the sample lacked diversity since enlistment was online-based. Besides, the clinics lacked gay venues. Sampling bias created by face-to-face interviews created a weakness since the interview method discouraged some willing gay persons who were uncomfortable.

Conclusion

Despite extensive syphilis-related knowledge among GBM with prior syphilis diagnosis or living with HIV, safe sex among gays is oriented around HIV prevention and not syphilis. Therefore, access to relevant knowledge on syphilis prevention does not contribute to safe sex practices. Therefore, the research affirms that clinical practices centred on education and awareness do not counteract the epidemic since behaviour change is challenging. Therefore, the evidence creates a pathway to rethink alternative clinical practices focusing on non-behavioural approaches while fostering better syphilis prevention techniques. Since GBM perceives syphilis as curable and treatable, hence prioritizing HIV prevention, clinical practice can consider a biomedical intervention. Also, evidence on increasing acceptance of biomedical prevention for HIV and STI asserts the benefits of syphilis PrEP in clinical practice.