While working through the evaluation of the research article, my main
struggle was selecting a topic, then an article. I am interested in both
educational psychology and clinical psychology, so the choice was more
difficult. Certain areas of study that came to mind were perfectionism in
education and looking for a study that would highlight any correlation
between intelligence and mental health concerns or disorders. The latter
seemed to support both fields, thus led to additional research. However, I
am still intrigued with the findings and may choose a different article than
what I have selected. Currently, I have no questions about the process
and I am enjoying exploring different topics and research findings within a
given topic.
%A recommedation, as noted by Jordan & Zanna (1999), that is helpful in
an article evaluation is that a title and abstract are important pieces of a
research article that assisted me with finding an article that I wanted to
examine. I also noticed that when I was researching, a title seemed to be
something interesting that I was looking for; however, the abstract noted
a different aspect of the study that I did not realize at first, thus leaving
me to choose a different topic.
Additionally, the article (1999) provided questions that could be asked
during the evaluation process of an article. Admittedly, every article is not
exciting to read. Therefore, asking questions throughout the process is
something that I like to do in order to keep myself engaged. What I did
find interesting within the article (1999) was the statement, “…many
students are tempted to skip over reading this section” in reference to the
results section of an article (Jordan & Zanna, 1999). This is interesting to
me because I always read the following elements of an article in the order
presented: Title, abstract, results, etc. To me, the results sections is the
most important as it presents the findings of the research conducted,
which left me wondering… does anyone else follow a similar method when
evaluating research articles?
