Education Research

IX540: Evaluating a Research Article and a Review of Literature Evaluating an Educational Research Article

In Scientific Research in Education (2002) Shavelson and Towne identified criteria that all educational research should include. Those criteria are: ● Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically; ● Link empirical research to relevant theory; ● Use research designs and methods that permit direct investigation of the

question; ● Is guided by a coherent and explicit chain of reasoning; ● Replicates and generalizes across studies; and ● Attends to contextual factors.

When you are searching for and selecting articles to include in your review of literature those articles should, as much as possible, adhere to those principles. You should ask if the research question is related to your particular study and then use the above principles to guide your review of that article. Your review of literature it is not just a collection of every article that you find that somehow might relate to your proposed research study, but rather a carefully selected group of the most relevant articles. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself about each article before you include it in your literature review.

1. Does the article’s topic provides a foundation for your research study? 2. What was the research hypotheses? 3. Was the research design appropriate to investigate the question? 4. Were appropriate sampling procedures used to support the conclusions? 5. How the data were collected? 6. Was the data analysis appropriate and interpreted correctly? 7. Were the conclusions of the study are supported by the data in the study? 8. What possible limitations might impact the study?

Evaluating a Review of Literature

In our text on pages 102 – 108 the author identifies criteria for evaluating the review of literature. The following should guide your evaluation of a review of literature, including the literature review in your research proposal. The literature review in your research proposal will, by necessity, include fewer articles than what you will typically find in

articles that you review, but you should attempt to meet as much of these criteria as possible. Here are some questions to ask yourself about the review of literature in an article, including your proposal!

1. Does it adequately cover previous research on the topic? 2. Does it cite findings from other studies? 3. Are the articles are relatively recent? 4. Does it analyze as well as summarize previous studies? 5. Is it organized logically? 6. Does it briefly summarize minor studies and discuss major studies in detail? 7. Does it relate previous studies explicitly to the research problem or methods? 8. Does it provide a logical basis for the hypothesis? 9. Does it establish a theoretical or conceptual framework for the problem? 10. Does it help establish the significance of the research?

References

McMillan, J. H. (2016). Fundamentals of Educational Research (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson

Shavelson, R. J., & Towne, L. (2002). Scientific Research in Education. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.