Critically Appraised Topics ( MINI CAT)

TOURISM PLANNING AND POLICY

Individual Assignment: Mini-CAT Words: 1500 words +/- (excluding references)

General Information

This assignment can provide students with up to either :

An additional 10 marks – over and above the total marks achieved for the course – if they can successfully demonstrate the implementation of steps 1 to 9 in section D

An additional 15 marks – over and above the total marks achieved for the course – if they can successfully demonstrate the implementation of steps 1 to 11 in section D
Overview of the mini-CAT

N.B. This is NOT a (Big) CAT (Refer to CEBMa’s Guideline for Critically Appraised Topics (CAT) in Management and Organizations available on e-resources in your course BB site)

This mini-CAT is adopted from the official CEBMa Guideline for Critically Appraised Topics (CAT) in Management and Organizations and is therefore a diluted version of the CAT but with the hope of raising awareness among students of the necessity to critically assess the quality of the evidence that they are supposed to accept without any question.

The goal of the mini-CAT is to help you learn the steps involved in assessing “what is known about” an intervention, a phenomenon, problematic or practical issue in scientific literature by using a systematic methodology to “search” for primary studies and “critically appraise” them.

In other words, the mini-CAT assessment wants you to explore and analyze the current state of the debate [on the practical issue, problematic, intervention or phenomenon] based on appropriate, deep and comprehensive SEARCH.

Indeed, this is the opportunity when you will put into practice the database search hints provided by Mr. Schmuel Ben-Gad in his talk on how to use library resources at the beginning of the semester.

Learning outcomes of the mini-CAT

Identify the problem explicated or implicated in the statement provided
Apply the principles of evidence-based management as provided in section D below
Explore the current state of the debate on the question at hand
Show that you indeed know how to search databases for the right data and information relevant to the mini-CAT question – you may consider looking for meta-analysesi, systematic reviews and/or controlled studies
Select the information and evidence that you think are relevant to the mini-CAT question
Extract information and evidence relevant to the mini-CAT question based on year, population, sector, sample size, main findings, and effect size
Assess the trustworthiness of the information and evidence (are they reliable and valid?)
Critically analyze the information and evidence collected in view of the mini-CAT question
Synthesize the findings of the mini-CAT in a concise statement of a few sentences
Reflect on the findings to highlight the limitations of the mini-CAT, the implications for current practice
Propose specific recommendations for actions based on the findings from the evidence presented in the mini-CAT

For this mini-CAT, we will provide you with a statement that will require that (i) you go beyond “cause and effect” to (ii) effectively look at how often [frequency/prevalence] the issue at hand as set in the statement or question has been tackled in scientific literature, (iii) at whether what you found in the scientific literature is evidence good enough for the practitioners to rely on them in making future decision related to tourism policy and planning, and (iv) you turn into (formulate) an appropriate CAT question related here to procedure, prevalence (frequency), process and procedure.

The statement for the mini-CAT–Formulate your own research question

Read the following statement carefully and carry out the instructions just below in order to address the requirements of this mini-CAT assignment.

“For tourism policy to be effective at a destination, there requires a carefully developed strategic sustainable tourism planning process which requires the involvement of all stakeholders at national, regional and international levels.”

Use the steps of the mini-CAT as described below to
Write an analytical essay that
Discusses (using critical and analytical thinking) whether the above statement is correct, to eventually
Synthesize (conclude and reflect) your findings based on evidence in the scientific literature about whether what is spelled out in a tourism plan is effectively integrated and implemented in tourism policy.

Steps of the mini-CAT (1 to 9) or (1 to 11):
Ascertain the requirement or goal of the mini-CAT question – provide in the Introduction a background that explains the rationale for the mini-CAT (why you are doing a mini-CAT), for the problem it is identifying, and for why the question being asked is important. In this case, you will have to come up with the question that

according to you reflects the mini-CAT. Specify the rationale for the mini-CAT by addressing the context (tourism sector, planning function at destination, policy function at different levels, characteristics of these two functions), the stakeholders involved and relevant to the problem at hand. It is important that you “reflect” on how these contextual elements together with the stakeholders at the different levels can provide deeper insights in the issues suggested by the min-CAT. If necessary, you may develop supplementary questions to help you answer the main question of the mini-CAT.

Search for studies relevant to the professional context of the question (destination management? levels of planning?) as a way to focus the question and to effectively search for the most relevant evidence. As a reviewer, ask pertinent and relevant questions to search for studies that are relevant to the context described in the background/introduction. Questions may include the following:
1. Who may be affected by the outcome of this mini-CAT? Planners? Policy- makers? Managers at destinations? Destinations? Tourists? Governmental departments? Regional organizations? Supranational organizations? Hotels? Attractions?
2. What type of integration are you looking for here? Or How does the integration work? Are these articles talking of management techniques, methods that are holistic, sustainable? Are the articles about processes of alignment and integration? Are the articles looking at strategies of implementations or at action plans at the most granular levels? Etc.
3. Are there articles out there that consider comparable issues, problems or systems of integration and implementation in the tourism industry? Are there different types of implementation? Are some plans more prescriptive than others? Are the approaches related to the political domain? Etc.
4. What are the articles trying to accomplish, improve or change? Are their purpose and objectives in line with the outcome expected? Are the results in the articles showing dissonance? Inefficiency? Waste?
5. In which kind of organizations or circumstances are these studies being carried out? Are they islands? Urban areas? Attractions? Countries? Regions? Resorts? Etc.

Tackling the above questions will also help you determine whether the findings of a study will be generalizable and applicable in the context of your mini-CAT. In effect, the questions will help answer the question of whether the population, type of intervention, comparison, outcome, and context (PICOC) of interest to the mini-CAT (identified in the lists of questions) are so different from the ones in the studies that come out of your search that their results may be difficult to apply and integrate in your answer.

Define the criteria you will use to identify studies you will include in your mini- CAT. In other words, pre-specify the criteria for including and excluding studies. You will use these criteria when reviewing the abstracts and/or section and/or full text of those studies that come out of your search. The criteria for inclusion should be guided by your mini-CAT question and objectives. The criteria define the studies that the search strategy is attempting to locate. Examples of inclusion criteria:

Date – period of publication of types of articles you are looking for
Language – all articles in English only and other languages if you can speak and write them
Type of studies you are looking for: empirical studies? Quantitative studies? Qualitative studies? Mixed-method studies? [remember – what is your research question?]
Study design: What types of study design do you intend include in your search of scientific articles?

Systematic reviews or meta-analysis
Cross sectional studies (surveys) with frequency

Case studies, case reports, traditional literature reviews, theoretical papers

Measurement: what did the studies use as measures? Effects? Presence or absence of processes? Frequency? Correlations?
Outcome: alignment, integration, implementation, dissonance, inefficiency,
Context: tourism development? National development? Regional development? Sustainable development? Policy implementation? Strategic planning? Etc.

Conduct a structured and transparent search for all relevant studies in the

international research literature using tourism and business related databases . You are strongly advised to go to your notes on how to search from the lecture of Mr. Schmuel Ben Gaad. If necessary, consider consulting the librarians to help you identify the different types of articles of significance to you. Apply the following generic search filters to all databases during your search:

Scholarly journals that are peer reviewed
Published in the period 1980 to 2017 for meta-analyses and the period 20000 to 2017 for primary studies
Articles in English
Combine different search terms, such as “tourism development,” “integrated strategic planning,” “tourism policy implementation,” etc.

Remember to make the search you have conducted transparent, verifiable and reproducible. In other words, document the search process preferably in the form of a table that shows which search terms were used, how search terms were combined, and how many studies were found at each and every step. See page 11 of CEBMA’s guideline to the CAT.

Select the studies from the large number of studies your search would yield by screening them to check that they meet the inclusion criteria as defined in step 3 above. Screening is done in two stages:
Review the abstracts – read the abstracts found through the searching. Compare each abstract against the inclusion criteria and if the abstract meets the criteria then the full study should be read.
Review full studies – Skim through the main sections of the full article to compare against the inclusion criteria

Extract data and information of the studies you will include in your mini-CAT by collating the results and other information of the studies included. From each study, information relevant to the CAT question, such as year of publication, research design, sample size, population (e.g. industry, sector, type of tourism activity, levels of organizations, etc.), outcome measures, main findings, effect sizes, weaknesses and the final level of trustworthiness (see step 7 below) should be reported, preferably in the form of a clearly structured table (See example in CEBMA’s guideline for the CAT on p. 14).
Critically appraise the studies you have included in your mini-CAT by determining whether they are trustworthy (i.e. valid and reliable) or not and rank their level of appropriateness. Simply put, at this stage you need to judge the methodological appropriateness. Unlike the CAT’s classification of articles which is based on determining the methodological appropriateness of effect studies and impact evaluations (see p. 15 in CEBMA’s guideline for the CAT), the mini-CAT question in this assignment does not examine cause-and-effect relationship but rather a non-effect or non- impact question related to the prevalence or frequency of phenomenon (how many/how often do people/organizations…?). To that effect, a cross sectional study may be the most appropriate study design (Petticrew and Roberts, 2003). In other words, just the research design (and not the statistical jumbo mambo) should give you an idea of the quality of the studies for which you are looking. You will need to demonstrate critical and analytical appreciation of the study designs you found in meta-analyses, critical reviews and journal articles, methods used, samples, and frequency measurement (%, no. of times, averages, etc.)
Provide an overview of the (list of) main findings relevant to the requirements of the mini-CAT question by:

providing an overview of the most common definition(s),
b. Presenting the main evidence from the mini-CAT, including its level of trustworthiness and effect size in the form of a table (intellectually engage with what you wrote in step 7)

Conclude your mini-CAT by synthesizing the main findings on the CAT question in a

very concise statement that actually answers the question. Tell us in the conclusion whether the scientific literature that you have scoured support the claim made in the statement set for this essay ————————————————————————————————————

Explicitly describe any limitations of the mini-CAT you have conducted and discuss how they possibly impacted the findings of the assessment – these limitations may be related to the search approach, search terms, the extraction of data, the findings and the answer to the question
Spell out clearly the implications of your findings and based on the evidence found, what would be your specific recommendations for action for the professional context involved.

Structure of your mini-CAT essay

The following is merely one suggested frame/structure for your mini-CAT essay. You may want to take a completely different approach with a different structure but make sure you that you can effectively show you are achieving the requirements of the mini-CAT and successfully demonstrate you have fully considered and implemented the steps involved in the mini-CAT. To that effect, you may consider including in the appendix tables that will explicitly show:

the terms (alternative and academic) you looked for to define the major constructs in the mini-CAT question – use thesaurus, synonyms (related to b. search descriptions part of your essay)
(ii) the search terms you finally select and the principles you used for your selection,
the search queries from the major tourism databases specifying the results for (a) each

(separate) of the search terms selected and (b) the terms in combination

Introduction – relates to steps 1, 2 [overview, rationale to the mini-CAT, the issue/problem at hand and developing related research question]. Remember to show that you know how to identify the problem here and focus the question
Searchdescriptions–relatestosteps3,4,5&6andrelatedtablesofstudies selected and data extracted in the appendix. At this point you should give us a snapshot table of your search terms, combinations of search terms and no. of results. You may have a separate snapshot table for (i) terms and alternative terms used from thesaurus, (ii) search terms selected and principles used for selection, and (iii) search queries from the major tourism databases
Critical Appraisal and presentation of findings– relates to steps 7 & 8
Conclusion
Limitations
Implications
References
Appendix with snapshots of all the tables that you think will provide granular details of the information that you searched

Meta-analysis refers to the analysis of analyses. I use it to refer to the statistical analysis of a large collection of

results from individual studies for the purpose of integrating findings. It connotes a rigorous alternative to the

casual, narrative discussions of research studies which typify our attempts to make sense of the rapidly expanding

literature (Gene Glass, 1976). Check this article on meta-analysis in medicine and keep for your reading pleasure

and next year’s research method class this PDF version of the book on Advances in meta-analysis

Answer Preview…………….
Effective policies are important in enhancing the growth of the tourism industry. There is focus on the rates of growth and the experiences that are important in focusing towards the growth of tourism. There is focus on the employment rates and the source of funding that guides the application of the policies at national, regional and international levels. Planning involves …………

APA 2931 word