Psychology Scientific Journal Article Critique

READING YOUR ARTICLE

This handout is to help you

1. Read your scientific article

2. Pick out important areas to read

3. Identify important facts

4. Interpret those facts

5. Begin your writing

Now that you have found your article … let’s begin to read. As you find “important” information,

underline it with pencil or highlighter.

Note what I say about each area of the research article and its importance (or lack of importance).

My Sample Article:

This is the abstract and contains

limited information. It is a good “brief”

reading, but your paper cannot totally

count on only this information.

The first of several paragraphs will be

“history” and miscellaneous

information. Although it is the

foundation of THIS author’s work, it is

not part of yours. Reading this area

will give you an idea of what came

before, but you will not report on it.

Alarm bells should be ringing in your

head! The “Method” section describes

A LOT of what you will need to write

about!!!

Some articles may have this while

others do not. It is often simply ALL

listed under “Method” or perhaps

called something like “Procedures”.

“Results” is a difficult read unless you

are a statistician. This section will have

a lot of scientific words that you may

not know the meaning of … but don’t

worry, you will find it translated into

“regular people talk” in the next

section …

Ah HA!!! I told you we’d find something

we understood! In the Discussion

(sometimes called the “Summary”) you will

read what the researcher’s meant in the

Results section.

As you read you will need to identify the following:

WHO

o Who were the subjects?

o Age? Sex? Race … other defining features?

o How many people?

WHAT

o What were researchers looking for?

o Did they have any predictions?

WHERE

o Where did the study take place?

o Lab? University? City/Country?

WHEN

o If available, what year was the study done?

o How long did it take?

HOW

o How did they study these subjects? Survey, testing, medication?

Finally, what did they find out?

CREATING YOUR OUTLINE

After you underline in pencil, all the important facts you wish to use, type up a list of those facts.

VERY IMPORTANT – DO NOT TYPE WHAT IS WRITTEN IN THE ARTICLE!!! You need to read the

fact and then type it IN YOUR OWN WORDS. Read it and write how you would explain what you just

read. For instance:

Article My interpretation:

When comparing the “pathology” group to

the other groups, the “pathology” subjects

were found to text more often than non-

pathology groups. Texting seems to give

the subjects a sense of closeness to others.