What is an article critique paper?

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An article critique is a written communication that conveys your understanding of a research article and how it relates to the conceptual issues of interest to a course.

This article critique paper will include things:

  1. Summary of the Article:

An article critique should briefly summarize, in your own words, the article research question and how it was addressed in the article. Below are some things to include in your summary.

  • The summary itself will include the following: (Note – if the article involved more than one experiment, you can either choose to focus on one of the studies specifically or summarize the general design for all of the studies)
    1. Type of study (Was it experimental or correlational? How do you know?)
    2. Variables (What were the independent and dependent variables? How did they manipulate the IV? How did they operationally define the DV? Be specific with these. Define the terms independent and dependent variable and make sure to identify how they are operationally defined in the article)
    3. Method (What did the participants do in the study? How was it set up? Was there a random sample of participants? Was there random assignment to groups?). How was data collected (online, in person, in a laboratory?).
    4. Summary of findings (What were their findings?)

 

  1. Critique of the study
  • This portion of the article critique assignment focuses on your own thoughts about the content of the article (i.e. your own ideas in your own words). For this section, please use the word “Critique” below the last sentence in your summary, and have the word “Critique” flush left.
  • This section is a bit harder, but there are a number of ways to demonstrate critical thinking in your writing. Address at least four of the following elements. You can address more than four, but four is the minimum.
  • 1). In your opinion, are there any confounding variables in the study (these could be extraneous variables or nuisance variables)? If so, explain what the confound is and specifically how it is impacting the results of the study. A sufficient explanation of this will include at least one paragraph of writing.
  • 2). Is the sample used in the study an appropriate sample? Is the sample representative of the population? Could the study be replicated if it were done again? Why or why not?
  • 3). Did they measure the dependent variable in a way that is valid? Be sure to explain what validity is, and why you believe the dependent variable was or was not measured in a way that was valid.
  • 4). Did the study authors correctly interpret their findings, or are there any alternative interpretations you can think of?
  • 5). Did the authors of the study employ appropriate ethical safeguards?
  • 6). Briefly describe a follow-up study you might design that builds on the findings of the study you read how the research presented in the article relates to research, articles or material covered in other sections of the course
  • 7). Describe whether you feel the results presented in the article are weaker or stronger than the authors claim (and why); or discuss alternative interpretations of the results (i.e. something not mentioned by the authors) and/or what research might provide a test between the proposed and alternate interpretations
  • 8). Mention additional implications of the findings not mentioned in the article (either theoretical or practical/applied)
  • 9). Identify specific problems in the theory, discussion or empirical research presented in the article and how these problems could be corrected. If the problems you discuss are methodological in nature, then they must be issues that are substantial enough to affect the interpretations of the findings or arguments presented in the article. Furthermore, for methodological problems, you must justify not only why something is problematic but also how it could be resolved and why your proposed solution would be preferable.
  • 10). Describe how/why the method used in the article is either better or worse for addressing a particular issue than other methods

 

  1. Brief summary of the article: One or Two paragraphs
  • Write the words “Brief Summary”, and then begin the brief summary below this
  • In ONE or TWO paragraphs maximum, summarize the article again, but this time I want it to be very short. In other words, take all of the information that you talked about in the summary portion of this assignment and write it again, but this time in only a few sentences.
  • The reason for this section is that I want to make sure you can understand the whole study but that you can also write about it in a shorter paragraph that still emphasizes the main points of the article. Pretend that you are writing your own literature review for a research study, and you need to get the gist of an article that you read that helps support your own research across to your reader. Make sure to cite the original study (the article you are critiquing).

 

  1. References
  • Provide the reference for this article in proper
  • If you cited other sources during either your critique or summary, reference them as well (though you do not need to cite other sources in this assignment – this is merely optional IF you happen to bring in other sources). Formatting counts here, so make sure to italicize where appropriate and watch which words you are capitalizing!