How to Read an Article

OK, so you’ve found your article. Now what? There is a method for reading an article critically. You are now going to work through an online tutorial that will make this method explicit.

Go to: http://www.psych.ualberta.ca/~varn/Kenrick/Reading.htm.

In order to complete this assignment, you’ll need to look at the original article, which was listed above as the target article. You may be able to access this article by getting a hard copy of it through our library.

Untalan, J. H. C., Mordeno, I. G., & Decatoria, J. B. (2008). Exploring the dark triad of personality in Filipino culture: Preliminary findings. Philippine Journal of Psychology, 41(2), 33-54.

Closure

Here are some point to consider as you read about a study. Some of these questions may require more knowledge than you have at this point, and you will not be able to answer them. They are included here just to let you know that they are important considerations.

Introduction

Who wrote the article and in which journal was it published?
What was the research question or hypothesis (some studies will have more than one)?
What background information was cited that led to the formation of this question?
Does the research address an important issue?

Method

Who were the participants, and how were they recruited? Are they appropriate for this particular research question?
What design was used for the study? Is the design appropriate to address the research question?
What measures were used? How were they operationalized? Do they measure what the author really wants to measure (in other words, are they valid?)
What ethical issues apply to this study? Were they addressed?
Were any extraneous variables identified? How were they controlled?

Results

What were the main findings of the study?
Do these results address the research question?
Were appropriate statistical analyses performed?

Discussion

What conclusions did the author draw from the results? Are the conclusions justified based on the results?
How do these findings relate to the literature (e.g., do they confirm earlier studies? Contradict? Raise new questions?)?
To what extent can the findings be generalized?