Article Critique Assignment For this assignment, you will be assigned an article

Article Critique Assignment
For this assignment, you will be assigned an article. You will write a critical evaluation (a paper) of the article that includes the information listed below. You will be graded both on the accuracy and completeness of your evaluation, as well as the quality of your writing. While this is a paper assignment, you should think of it as a test that is assessing your ability to critically consider an empirical article. Must be in APA format.
I. Background/Introduction
A. What is the central problem or topic, in plain English?
B. What are the major theories involved in attempting to understand this problem? If there are no theories presented, why is that? Can they be inferred?
C. List and briefly describe a couple of key research findings that help us frame the current work.
D. What are the primary hypotheses or research questions? How do they connect to the theories and previous findings?
II. Variables/Measures
A. What is the sample population? Evaluate its appropriateness for the research question.
B. Variables
List the primary variables of interest. For each variable:
1) address whether it is a manipulated, subject, or measured variable. If it is a measured variable, which scale of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio) is being used.
2) provide the operational definition of the variable in the current study
3) describe why this variable is appropriate for the current study given the stated goals/hypothesis(es) of the researcher(s)
C. Design/Procedure
A. What kind of design is this? Experimental, Quasi-Experimental, Observational, Correlational, Case, or Archival?
B. Does this design allow you to make a cause and effect conclusion (i.e. causal interpretation) regarding the results? Explain why or why not. As a reminder, causal interpretation means that you can assume that changes in the measured variable are due to differences in the manipulated variable.
C. Identify potential threats to internal validity (e.g., confounding variables – or other variables that are present in the study that could potentially effect the results). These may include but certainly are not limited to things like social desirability, practice effects, the composition of the experimental groups, changes over time, extraneous events, attrition, regression to the mean, etc. Remember, in order for this to be a confound, it must provide an alternative explanation of the results of the study.
D. Discuss the ecological validity of the study context—how closely does the study protocol approximate the phenomenon of interest as it occurs in the real world? You should address the generalizability of the data here as well.
III. Analysis/Results
A. How were the primary research questions addressed, statistically (e.g., correlation, t-test, ANOVA, regression, etc.)
B. Identify a primary table or figure and describe it. How does it address the study’s primary hypotheses?
IV. Conclusions/Discussion
A. Discuss the appropriateness of the authors’ conclusions. Did they provide alternative explanations of their findings?
B. Evaluate the impact of the findings. Are they theoretically important? Why or why not? Are they practically important? Why or why not?
Article Critique Assignment
For this assignment, you will be assigned an article. You will write a critical evaluation (a paper) of the article that includes the information listed below. You will be graded both on the accuracy and completeness of your evaluation, as well as the quality of your writing. While this is a paper assignment, you should think of it as a test that is assessing your ability to critically consider an empirical article. Must be in APA format.
I. Background/Introduction
A. What is the central problem or topic, in plain English?
B. What are the major theories involved in attempting to understand this problem? If there are no theories presented, why is that? Can they be inferred?
C. List and briefly describe a couple of key research findings that help us frame the current work.
D. What are the primary hypotheses or research questions? How do they connect to the theories and previous findings?
II. Variables/Measures
A. What is the sample population? Evaluate its appropriateness for the research question.
B. Variables
List the primary variables of interest. For each variable:
1) address whether it is a manipulated, subject, or measured variable. If it is a measured variable, which scale of measurement (nominal, ordinal, interval, or ratio) is being used.
2) provide the operational definition of the variable in the current study
3) describe why this variable is appropriate for the current study given the stated goals/hypothesis(es) of the researcher(s)
C. Design/Procedure
A. What kind of design is this? Experimental, Quasi-Experimental, Observational, Correlational, Case, or Archival?
B. Does this design allow you to make a cause and effect conclusion (i.e. causal interpretation) regarding the results? Explain why or why not. As a reminder, causal interpretation means that you can assume that changes in the measured variable are due to differences in the manipulated variable.
C. Identify potential threats to internal validity (e.g., confounding variables – or other variables that are present in the study that could potentially effect the results). These may include but certainly are not limited to things like social desirability, practice effects, the composition of the experimental groups, changes over time, extraneous events, attrition, regression to the mean, etc. Remember, in order for this to be a confound, it must provide an alternative explanation of the results of the study.
D. Discuss the ecological validity of the study context—how closely does the study protocol approximate the phenomenon of interest as it occurs in the real world? You should address the generalizability of the data here as well.
III. Analysis/Results
A. How were the primary research questions addressed, statistically (e.g., correlation, t-test, ANOVA, regression, etc.)
B. Identify a primary table or figure and describe it. How does it address the study’s primary hypotheses?
IV. Conclusions/Discussion
A. Discuss the appropriateness of the authors’ conclusions. Did they provide alternative explanations of their findings?
B. Evaluate the impact of the findings. Are they theoretically important? Why or why not? Are they practically important? Why or why not?