How to Evaluate Research Articles

Research articles have a wide variety of possibilities. Research articles can be written by fourth grade students or by 60-year-old college professors. Every field of science uses the research article concept. A research article about a topic that is written for college would be different than one written for a magazine, interview or website. Every researcher writing an article has a format and requirements that must be met. The researcher must evaluate sources to determine how well those sources meet their needs and how reliably they present arguments, ideas and information. Evaluating a source means examining its relevance and use of evidence.

Instructions

1. Read the article's "Abstract." The abstract should contain a brief summary of the research and methods, and may indicate the findings.

2. Read the article's "Introduction." The introduction is the beginning of the article. In a research article it will appear directly after the abstract. The introduction should contain information about the author's interest in the topic, why he chose to research the topic, his hypothesis and methods.

3. Read the article's "Discussion" section. The "Methods" section follows the introduction in an article, but the "Discussion" section explains the findings in greater detail and discusses any problems the author had discovered, so we will skip the "Methods" section for now.

4. Read the article's "Methods" section now you that know what the author's results mean. This section goes into detail about the types of equipment used, techniques used, theories focused on for the research, and any other applicable information that was used to do the research.

5. Read the article's "Results" section. This is typically the most technical section of the research article. Essentially, the results section discusses the findings of the research. It may include statistics, dependant and independent variables, subject variables, equations and other research analysis. The specific type of data in this section will be determinate by what field of study the research article is covering. You may have to know research terms such as correlation, coefficient, interaction and interrater reliability.

6. Read the article's "Conclusion." The conclusion is the end of the article. There may be appendices following the conclusion, but they are not considered part of the article, they are in support of the article. The conclusion should state what the author feels is the value of her research. It may also include suggestions for future research.

References

• Cornell University Library

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish
• Cornell University Library