Social Work

ANALYZING A JOURNAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

 

Students Name:

Date:

 

APA Citation for the article:

 

Step 1. What is the purpose/hypothesis/aim/objective of the study?

 

Write down the exact statement in which the authors describe what they were testing.

 

Now describe the purpose of the study (as you understand it) in your own words.

 

What was the gap in the research that the authors were trying to fill by doing their study?  

 

Step 2. What is/are the major finding(s) of the study

 

Make some notes about the authors major conclusions or findings as written in the article.

 

Now write those conclusions (as you understand them) in your own words.

 

Step 3. How did the authors test their hypothesis?

 

Provide a detailed overview the main steps that the authors used in their research methods (including the sampling frame, tool, etc.)

 

Do the authors suggest any problems or limitations with their methodology? Do you see any problems or limitations with their methodology?

 

How did the authors analyze their data? What test/s did they use?

 

Step 4. How reliable are the results?

 

Do the authors suggest any problems with the study that could lead to unreliable results?

 

Step 5. Based on your analysis, are the claims made in this journal article accurate?

 

Do the conclusions made (about the results) by the author make sense to you? Are the conclusions too broad or too narrow based on what was actually done in the study?

 

Based on the accuracy of the methodology and the reliability of the results as described in Steps 3 and 4, do you think the conclusions can be believed?

 

Step 6. What is the importance of this scientific work?

Write (in your own words) the significant contributions of the experimental work in this journal article as reported by the authors.

Explain why you think this is a strong or weak scientific article or a strong or weak scientific study