What Are The Ethical Issues Of Conducting A Cross Sectional Study

METHODOLOGY The article is a cross-sectional study which was conducted in six public primary care clinics in Federal Territory, Malaysia. A cross-sectional study is a type of observational study that analyzes data collected from a population, or a representative subset, at a specific point in time. Unfortunately, there was no exact date when the study has been conducted. The authors did not mention clearly in the article regarding the exact date and period took to conducting the study. It is important to clearly state in the article about the frame time of this study was conducted as it will give a guide to the readers to decide whether this study is up to date or not.

The participants were selected via systemic random sampling. The participants

The ethical issue was an important part of conducting a study. In my opinion, ethical is an act to ask for a permission before performing any experiment without being influenced by the result of the experiment. Through this ethical issue, the privacy and confidentiality of the participants are covered well. Corti, Day & Backhouse (2000) stated that research should be based on the willingness of the participants to participate the study. The authors are responsible to explain fully and meaningfully what the study is about and how it will be disseminated. Participants should be aware of their right to refuse to participate; understand the extent to which confidentiality will be maintained; be aware of the potential uses to which the data might be put, and in some cases be reminded of their right to re-negotiate consent (Corti, Day & Backhouse, 2000). Prior to commencement of data collection, the researchers sought approval from University Research Ethics Committee of Universiti Putra Malaysia. Unfortunately, when the data was collected, the authors did not mention clearly either the participant was giving a formal or verbal consent before agreeing to an

Direct interview was conducted to get a data regarding participants sociodemographic characteristics and clinical histories such as the duration of hypertension, family history of hypertension and smoking status. Then, the participants were given a Hill-Bone high BP compliance scale questionnaire. The questionnaire consists of 14 item to assess the compliance to antihypertensive medication, compliance to salt intake and appointment keeping. The content and face validation were undertaken prior to data collection in view of the Hill-Bone questionnaire was not validated locally. The authors suppose to choose a questionnaire which was valid locally in making sure that the result is relevant in our country, but as mention by the authors in the article, there was no questionnaire validated locally available. This situation becomes one of the limitations of the study. The authors also collected the data regarding the information on treatment and comorbidity profiles from the medical records.

DATA ANALYSIS Data were analyzed with Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20.0. All of the pertinent findings were included in the result. Categorical variables were presented as frequency (n) and percentage (%) and continuous variables were presented as mean and standard deviation. Pearson’s Chi-square and independent t-tests were used to analyze the relationship between blood pressure control and the independent