Summary and Reaction Paper Assignments (Research Assignments 2 and 3)
FCST 304 – Goldstein
Due dates: As listed on syllabus
The goal of these next 2 research assignments is for you to become familiar with reading and analyzing peer-reviewed empirical research articles in Human Development and Family Science. By the time you start on this set of assignments, you should have already selected your main topic for your research design and proposal assignment (which you will write at the end of the semester). In this series of assignments, you will closely read and analyze three peer reviewed journal articles which are related to the research ideas that you will be developing at the end of the semester. You should have already received feedback whether the articles that you selected are appropriate for this series of assignments.
For each assignment, the following items are expected:
1) Page 1: APA-style title page. See page 353 of your textbook for an example – PLEASE FOLLOW EXACTLY.
2) Pages 2, 3, and possibly 4, 5, and/or 6: Summary, analysis, and critique of the research article that you are reviewing. Don’t forget to continue your page #s and running headers!
3) Final page: APA style reference section (yes, it will only have 1 article in it – but it is good practice). Running headers and page #s belong here too! You can see an example of this on page 367 of your text. PLEASE FOLLOW EXACTLY.
What to include in your summary? Each summary should answer the following questions (you should have at least one full sentence for each number, in many cases there will be several sentences for each number):
1. What is the title of the article?
2. Who are the authors of the article?
3. What is the name of the journal where the article can be found?
4. What is the year of publication? If there are different dates for online publication versus print publication, and these are listed, it is okay to include both but the one that “counts” as the final one is the print version. For online journals, there may be an “advanced online publication” date versus a final publication date; you would use the final publication date.
5. What rationale did the author(s) provide as to why the topic that they are studying is important? Please describe in at least 3-5 sentences. You will find this information in the “introduction” section of the paper.
6. How many participants were included in the study? Please be as specific as possible with information about gender, race, age, and any and all information provided in the “participants” section, which is a part of the “method” section.
7. How was the information gathered in the present study? For example, was it an interview? A survey? An experiment? Was it a one-time data collection, or were the data collected over several months or years? Be as specific as possible. You can find this in the “procedure” section of the “method” part of the paper, and sometimes in other sections of the “method” section as well.
8. What specific instruments or tests are used to measure the constructs that the researchers say that they are measuring? Be as specific as possible. The authors likely give specific names for scales or experimental techniques, or may list questions that were asked.
9. What statistical techniques did the authors say that they used in the “results” section? Or, if the data were qualitative, what techniques were used to analyze the data? There are likely several steps that were taken, in any type of article. Please discuss all steps that were taken.
10. Select ONE specific result that is most interesting to you, and explain it (if you want to present more than one, that is fine too! But, you need to select at least ONE).
11. In the discussion section, the authors usually summarize their findings, and then discuss reasons why these occur and their implications for future research. Ideally, articles will also discuss implications for working with individuals and families. For this question, please list ONE claim that the authors make about their work – why do the authors of the paper think that their research is important?
12. It is time to provide your opinion about the article. Did it answer questions that you had about your topic? Why or why not?
13. Do you think that the authors used appropriate methodology? Why or why not? For example, you might not like the way that the authors measured a particular construct. Or, you might think that the authors should have used a different technique all together to get their information. Alternatively, you might love what they did – so in this question you need to explain what about it you found appealing.
14. Last but not least, what do you think the authors could do to expand their research in the future?
Class attendance leads to higher grades (Smith, 2014; as cited in Goldstein, 2017).
When you cite a finding that another author cited but you do not read that source directly, it is called a secondary source citation and you cite it like this (Smith, 2017; as cited in Goldstein 2018). Basically, you read the Goldstein (2018) paper but not the Smith (2017) paper; however, you believe that the Smith (2017) findings were relevant.
“Here are the findings” (Goldstein, 2017, p. 234).
“When you use exact quotes you need to also include the page number in your citation. This being said, please only include two direct quotations per paper” (Goldstein, 2018, p. 1).
