The authors conducted a systematic review and meta-evaluation to
evaluate the methodological quality of interventions using NRT for adolescent smoking cessation. A systematic review was selected as it provides a systematic way to search for, appraise, and synthesize what
remains unknown as well as recommendations for practice (Grant &
Booth, 2009). This review was conducted using the matrix method
(Garrard, 2010), originally designed for reviews of health science literature. This structure and process for systematic reviews consists of
abstracting data from individual articles, organizing the data into a
matrix, and interpreting patterns among thefindings.
Methodological quality was assessed usingfive criteria suggested by
Windsor (2003): (1) type of intervention design; (2) sample size and
sample representativeness; (3) specification of population characteristics; (4) measurement validity and reliability; and (5) appropriateness
and replicability of intervention methods (Table 1). Criterion 1, research
design, refers to whether the intervention was a true randomized controlled trial or a non-experimental study and considers equivalence of
groups at baseline. Criterion 2 contains both representativeness, including an assessment of inclusion/exclusion criteria, and an assessment of
sample size/power estimate. Criterion 3 assesses the reporting of population characteristics while Criterion 4 rates the quality of measurement
used, in this case for smoking cessation. Criterion 5 contains both appropriateness and replicability of the intervention. These criteria were used
to evaluate the methodological quality of NRT interventions for
adolescent smoking cessation. Ratings were applied to the quality of research, based on reported information, for each of thefive dimensions.
Literature was gathered from EBSCOhost, ERIC, ProQuest, and
PubMed electronic databases. These databases were selected because
they are known for either health or educational interventions. Each
database was searched using the following string of terms to search
within the abstract: (adolescents OR teens OR“young adults” OR
students OR youth) AND (smoking OR cigarettes OR tobacco OR