Reading scientific papers may seem daunting. They have a formal structure and authors don't always write as clearly as they could. But they are all structured about the same. Your task for this review is to identify specific pieces of information in the paper you selected and consider the utility and/or strength of the evidence presented.
Don't read your paper straight through, skim the structure first.
I generally read the abstract, skim for structure, identify hypotheses, experimental method, then briefly review the introduction and conclusion. If the paper looks important, I will dig deeper.
The most important thing is to remain open-minded (skeptical, even) and not read too much into the study. As a reader, it can be difficult not to over-generalize results or take a single study as definitive proof. To read critically, consider how choices the author made may have led to conclusions that are not generalizable.
What is the central research question addressed?
The answer to this question should be in the abstract. It should also be re-iterated somewhere toward the beginning of the paper. It will be helpful to find this, since abstracts are dense and you may need more information to fully understand what is meant.
Often experimental studies will have multiple hypotheses and conditions. This is to rule out alternative explanations. It's not possible to conduct a perfect experiment - but authors will try to provide as much evidence as possible to support their claim.
Hypothesis
Research design (You will need to refer to material given in class)
Conditions & variables
Findings
I find it helps to take notes while reading. For experiments, it helps to sketch out a table to capture the conditions and variables. In your own words (and succinctly), what are the findings?
Please make sure you answer the "how" or "why nots" and not just "yes" or "no."
Does the paper seem significant or not? Why or why not?
Does the methodology seem sound or suspect? In what sense?
Can you think of confounding variables that the author did not discuss?
Does this paper get its message across clearly? How or how not?
Does it change your thoughts or has it introduced new ideas to you? In what way?
Do you think the study is reproduce-able (like an exact recipe) or that the author left out too many details? What do you think needed more explanation?
Can you imagine how insights from this paper might be used in design?
Look at the notes in this paper, to help guide your thinking. Those annotations in red refer directly to the summary portion of your assignment.
The critique is worth 10 points. It doesn't need to be longer than 1-2 pages. You can use narrative or bullets. I'm not looking for quantity - but evidence of your thinking.
- 1 point - research question
These may be divided across experiments; some studies have multiple experiments -- do your best to summarize.
- 1 point - hypothesis
- 1 point - research design
- 1 point - conditions & variables
- 1 point - findings
- Select and answer five questions from section three above.
Guidelines appear in the critical-review template in your repo. But you can also see them here.