There were many struggles I encountered while reading through my
article. I had a particularly difficult time analyzing the results as they were
not what I expected. I went into reading the article with a preconceived
mindset that the hypothesis will be proven true. As Jordan and Zanna
(1999) noted, research papers are structured in a way that lends itself to
a specific way of reading. This, in turn, makes it easy for some scholars to
judge a paper by its hypothesis.(
(
In addition, I had difficulty analyzing the sophisticated statistics. I am not
a student of mathematics nor do I claim to be as such. Therefore I
struggled to break down the results in a simplistic manner in my essay. As
suggested by Jordan and Zanna (1999), I focused on a couple of questions
instead: “How were the hypotheses translated into testable questions?
How were the variables of interest manipulated and/or measured? Did the
measures used adequately reflect the variables of interest? For example,
is self-reported income an adequate measure of social class? Why or why
not?”(
(
There were outside resources involved in helping me choose a good
article and break it down. An article by Subramanyam (2018) was
particularly useful in the selection of my paper. I went through a couple of
articles focusing on the intersection between homosexuality and
psychology, but found none to be of substance until I came across his
work. He presented a thorough diagram in the form of a questionnaire. I
would recommend everyone to view this diagram as it is useful for a
novice researcher like myself, but could be valuable to experienced
scholars as well.
References
(
Jordan, C., & Zanna, M. (n.d.). How to read a journal article. Retrieved April
2022, from https://www.uvm.edu/~dguber/POLS234/articles/read.htm(
Subramanyam R. (2018). Art of reading a journal article: Methodically and
effectively.(Journal of oral and maxillofacial pathology : JOMFP,(17(1), 65–
70. https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-029X.110733
