PSYC 209 - 1638

Article Summary guidelines

Article Summary & 3 Critical Question Guidelines

Purpose: This assignment acquaints you with reading a scientific article and with scientific writing. Being able to read and properly summarize scientific articles will help you when you write papers, research proposals, and lab reports in other psychology classes.

SECTION A: WHAT YOU NEED AND WHERE TO GET IT

1. The Research Articles to use for this Homework Assignment

· You can find these articles on Canvas. It is posted in the weekly Module under READ as well as in the assignment body.

2. Information on Scientific Style and How to Write a Summary

· The Psychology Writing Center

· (Links to an external site.)

· at University of Washington has several downloadable PDFs, including this one about summarizing a research article

· (Links to an external site.)

· .

· APA formatting help can be found in this SCC Library guide

· Actions

· or from OWL At Purdue

· (Links to an external site.)

·

SECTION B: IF YOU NEED HELP

Bruce McKenna Writing Center at SCC

· Writing Center staff can discuss APA style, help you organize your ideas, and give you feedback on the clarity of your rough draft and citations. During campus closure, the writing center will be providing writing assistance via email. Students can send their essay drafts with instructions attached to [email protected]

· Students should allow roughly 1-3 business days for a response, depending on different traffic times throughout the quarter.

My Virtual Office Hours: Let's set up a time to chat through Canvas or video call on Zoom to discuss your draft!

SECTION C: PROCEDURE FOR WRITING YOUR SUMMARY

1. Read the article. Identify key points: the research topic, purpose and hypotheses (if any), what was done, the results, and how the researchers interpreted the results. Highlighting or underlining these points as you read will help you find them more easily when you write. Here are my tips for making your way through a science journal article:

· Read the abstract. This is a 150-ish word summary of the whole paper. Every single sentence in an abstract is informative.

· Read the introduction. This is the beginning of the paper. In the introduction, authors discuss the theory behind their research, previous research findings, and their hypotheses. The intro might have subheadings. Read this introduction section thoroughly.

· Read the methods section paying particular attention to the participants and procedure sections.

· Just skim the results section. Unless you have already taken a statistics course, you probably don't want to read things like t(2, 67) = 4.68, p<.05.

· Read the discussion section thoroughly.This is where the authors will tell you in English what they learned from their study.

2. Write the summary. The summary should be a condensed version of the article, not an abstract (abstracts are more concise). Avoid "lifting" sentences from the article. Use your own words. You will lose points for using quotes. MAKE SURE that you properly cite the authors of the assigned article using APA citation style at least once within your summary (SEE EXAMPLES AT THE END OF THIS HANDOUT).

· Your summary should be 1 page to 1.5 pages in length (no more, no less), DOUBLE-SPACED, Font Size 12. Margins should be 1.25" at the top, bottom, left and right.

4. Try to follow these General Length Guidelines, within the overall 1 to 1.5 page limit:

Approximate number of sentences per topic:

· 2-4: Background (Describe the context for the study.)

· 1-2: Specific purpose(s) of the study

· 4-7: Method (Who and how many participated? What variables were examined? What was the research design – in other words, what "conditions" or "groups" were compared, if any? What was the procedure—what did the participants and researchers do?

· 2-5: Results (Describe the key findings.)

· 2-4 Discussion (According to the authors…. What do the results mean? What are the implications of the findings? What are the limitations of the study? What are future directions for this research topic?)

5. Write 3 critical questions about the article that your classmates will answer. These questions should not be merely fact based or for clarity on the research paper. They should spur discussion and deeper thought. Use “ Bloom’s Taxonomy for Developing Questions ” for assistance.