NR-505 Week 6 is where the appraised studies stop being a pile and start being an argument. Synthesis means organizing by what the evidence shows rather than by who wrote it, weighting each finding by the strength of the design behind it, and reporting where the studies disagree instead of smoothing the disagreement away. The mechanical trick that makes it possible is a table you build before you write a sentence. Your section may print this as NR 505 or NR505; it is the same course. Chamberlain publishes no syllabi outside Canvas. The placement here is our teaching judgment from the course's catalog arc; your section's rubric decides what your week actually asks.
What NR-505 Week 6 asks for
Two structural signals tell a grader within seconds which kind of section they are reading. In a summary, every paragraph opens with an author's name and a year. In a synthesis, every paragraph opens with a claim about the evidence, and the authors appear inside as support, as qualification or as contradiction. Nothing else about the section matters as much as that difference, and it is entirely under your control at the outline stage.
Weighting is the second requirement. A synthesis that treats a multi site trial and a single ward project as equal voices has not appraised anything, so let strength of design show in the sentence: where the strongest evidence points, and what the weaker work adds beyond it. This is also where a levels of evidence hierarchy earns its place, provided you name the one you are using rather than referring vaguely to levels.
Deliverables at this depth are typically substantial, often a written synthesis with an evidence table, and this is usually the largest single piece of the session. If your section runs a discussion this week it will likely ask what your evidence is showing so far, and posts do not reopen after submission in Canvas, so say something specific rather than something safe.
The NR-505 Week 6 method, step by step
Six moves from a stack of appraised studies to a section that argues.
-
Build the grid before you write
One row per study; columns for design, sample and setting, what was done, what was measured, the result in clinical units, and your appraisal verdict. Filling this in is an evening of work that saves two days of drafting.
-
Read down the columns, never across the rows
Reading across produces a summary because it walks you through one study at a time. Reading down the result column shows you where studies converge, and those convergences are your paragraph headings.
-
Name three or four findings, not ten
A synthesis with ten themes has one sentence each and demonstrates nothing. Three or four claims, each carrying several studies, is what depth looks like in a section of this size.
-
Write each paragraph claim first, evidence second
Open with what the evidence shows, then bring in the studies that support it, then the ones that qualify it. If a paragraph cannot be opened with a claim, the material in it is probably not a finding but a topic.
-
Put the disagreements on the page
Where two studies point different ways, say so, then explain what might account for it: population, intensity, duration, outcome measure, follow up window. That explanation is usually the highest value sentence in the whole section.
-
Close with the state of the evidence
Two or three sentences saying where the evidence is strong, where it is thin, and what nobody has studied. That paragraph is what the proposal stage will lean on when it argues for a pilot rather than a full rollout.
A layout and word budget for an evidence synthesis
Our frame for a synthesis section, sized for roughly 1,400 to 1,800 words plus the table. It is our own outline rather than anything the university issues, and your week's rubric outranks it wherever they disagree.
| Section | What belongs in it | Word target |
|---|---|---|
| Orientation | How many studies, of what designs, from what settings, and how they are organized in what follows. | 120 to 160 |
| Finding one | The claim, the studies supporting it, the strength of those designs, and the size of the effect where it is known. | 300 to 360 |
| Finding two | A separate claim with its own evidence, not a restatement of the first in different words. | 300 to 360 |
| Finding three | Often the implementation layer: what it took to deliver the intervention where it worked. | 250 to 320 |
| Where the evidence conflicts | The disagreements stated plainly with a methodological explanation offered for each. | 250 to 300 |
| State of the evidence | Strengths, gaps and the limits of what can be claimed, written so the proposal can be sized against it. | 180 to 240 |
Evidence craft for synthesis
Name the hierarchy you are using. Several levels of evidence systems exist and they number their levels differently. Cite the one you apply and use its terms, because a claim that a study is level two means nothing without the system that defines level two.
Do not count the same study twice. If a systematic review in your set includes three of your primary studies, saying that seven sources support a finding overstates it. Note the overlap in a clause, and treat reviews as maps of a literature rather than as extra votes.
Keep the numbers comparable when you place them side by side. Two studies reporting the same outcome over different windows are not directly comparable, and neither are results reported as proportions in one and as counts in another. State each one with its base and its period in the same sentence, then say explicitly what makes them comparable or not.
Attribute agreement to the studies, not to the field. Writing that the literature supports an intervention is an assertion about a body of work you have not read in full. Write instead that four of the six studies in this review reported a reduction, and name which designs those four used. Precision of that kind is what the synthesis row is measuring.
Five mistakes that cost points in this week's territory
- Paragraphs that open with an author's name. That structure is a summary regardless of how well each study is described.
- Every study given equal weight. If the appraisal stage produced no differences in weight, it was not an appraisal.
- Disagreement quietly dropped. A literature in which everything agrees usually means the search was narrow or the reading was kind, and graders read unanimity with suspicion.
- An evidence table pasted in with no reference to it. The table supports the argument; it does not replace it, and a section that never points at its own table wastes both.
- Findings that are really topics. A paragraph headed staff education is a subject. A paragraph claiming that education alone did not change practice without a workflow change is a finding.
Before you submit
- No paragraph in the synthesis opens with an author and a year
- Each finding carries more than one study, and their designs are named
- Overlap between reviews and primary studies is acknowledged
- At least one genuine disagreement is reported and explained
- The table and the narrative agree on every number they share
- The closing paragraph states what the evidence cannot yet support
Building the NR-505 synthesis?
Send the rubric and your appraised studies out of Canvas. A premium original draft comes back in 24 to 48 hours organized by finding rather than by article, with the disagreements explained, and revisions run until the grade lands.