Research article critique apa format

Purpose of The Article Critique Paper

1). Psychological Purpose

This paper serves several purposes, the first of which is helping you gain insight into research papers in psychology. As this may be your first time reading and writing papers in psychology, one goal of Paper I is to give you insight into what goes into such papers. This article critique paper will help you learn about the various sections of an empirical research report by reading at least one peer-reviewed articles (articles that have a Title Page, Abstract*, Literature Review, Methods Section, Results Section, and References Page—I have already selected some articles for you to critique, so make sure you only critique one in the folder provided on Blackboard). This paper will also give you some insights into how the results sections are written in APA formatted research articles. Pay close attention to those sections, as throughout this course you’ll be writing up some results of your own!

In this relatively short paper, you will read one of five articles posted on blackboard and summarize what the authors did and what they found. The first part of the paper should focus on summarizing the design the authors used for their project. That is, you will identify the independent and dependent variables, talk about how the authors carried out their study, and then summarize the results (you don’t need to fully understand the statistics in the results, but try to get a sense of what the authors did in their analyses). In the second part of the paper, you will critique the article for its methodological strengths and weaknesses. Finally, in part three, you will provide your references for the Article Critique Paper in APA format.

2). APA Formatting Purpose

The second purpose of the Article Critique paper is to teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting. In the instructions below, I tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers, so pay attention to the instructions below as well as Chapter 14 in your textbook! I highly recommend using the Paper I Checklist before submitting your paper, as it will help walk you through the picky nuances of APA formatting.

3). Writing Purpose

Finally, this paper is intended to help you grow as a writer. Few psychology classes give you the chance to write papers and receive feedback on your work. This class will! We will give you feedback on this paper in terms of content, spelling, and grammar.

*Most peer-reviewed articles do include an abstract, but the articles you will see on Blackboard lack an Abstract. There is a good reason for this, which you’ll find out about in a later paper!

Article Critique Paper (50 points possible)

Each student is required to write an article critique paper based on one of the research articles present on Blackboard (only those articles listed on Blackboard can be critiqued – if you critique a different article, it will not be graded). The article critique paper will account for 50 points. In addition to deepening your understanding of conceptual issues discussed in lectures, this article critique assignment is designed to improve critical thinking and writing skills. Please follow the instructions and guidelines below. If you are unclear about any of this information, please ask.

What is an article critique paper?

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 this course. There are five elements emphasized in this critique: The title page (in APA formatting), summary of the article, critique of the article, brief (one paragraph) summary of the article, and appropriate referencing for the article. I suggest also looking at the example papers, which will give you a nice visual image of APA style that you can mimic in your own paper.

This article critique paper will include 5 things:

1. Title page: 1 page (4 points)

· Use APA style to present the appropriate information:

· A Running head must be included and formatted APA style

· The phrase “Running head” is at the top of the title page followed by a short title of your creation (no more than 50 characters) that is in ALL CAPS. This running head is left-justified (flush left on the page). Note that the “h” in head is all lower case! Look at the first page of these instructions, and you will see how to set up your Running head.

· There must be a page number on the title page that is right justified. It is included in the header

· Your paper title appears on the title page. This is usually 12 words or less, and the first letter of each word is capitalized. It should be descriptive of the paper (For this paper, you should use the title of the article you are critiquing. The paper title can be the same title as in the Running head or it can differ – your choice)

· Your name will appear on the title page

· Your institution will appear on the title page as well

· For all papers, make sure to double-space EVERYTHING and use Times New Roman font. This includes everything from the title page through the references.

· This is standard APA format. ALL of your future papers will include a similar title page

2. Summary of the Article: 1 ½ page minimum, 3 pages maximum - 14 points)

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 CAPS portion of your running head should also appear on the first page of your paper, but it will NOT include the phrase “Running head” this time, only the same title as the running head from the first paper in ALL CAPS. Again, see the example paper. There is a powerpoint presentation on using Microsoft Word that can help you figure out how to have a different header on the title page (where “Running head” is present) and other pages in the paper (where “Running head” is NOT present). You can also find how-to information like this using youtube!