apa article critique example

apa article critique example

Analyzing and Critiquing APA Style Articles: A Comprehensive Guide

1. Introduction to APA Style Articles

Complete guidance will be given for understanding each major section of a research article, and information is presented about both the substance and style. Further concepts may emphasize interpretation of articles of interest, inclusion of appropriate content in research papers, and development of an effective writing style. It is expected that readers will use the guide to actively study core elements of research reports and to make notes in the margins of what they perceive to be critical. These notes may serve as brainstorming aids in activities requiring application of reading and interpretation strategies.

Most students in the social and behavioral sciences are required to write research papers written in the publication style of the American Psychological Association (APA), hereafter referred to as style articles or just APA articles. It is essential for students to be able to interpret both the structure and content of these articles before trying to author one. This comprehensive guide is designed to help two particular types of student readers: students taking classes in research methods, theories of identity development, moral and cognitive development, social cognition, or courses in educational psychology as well as those taking educational psychology, teaching of psychology, or other pedagogy courses where they are shown articles for analysis, critique, or reflection.

2. Key Components of an APA Style Article

3. Paper Body: This section of our guides addresses five components of the body of the paper, including the Title, Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion. Each section has its own page to help familiarize readers with the key components and questions that will be addressed.

2. Abstract: This succinct summary of the scope, hypotheses, methods, results and conclusions must be within 150 – 250 words and should precede the paper body.

1. Title Page/First Page: The title, or title and author’s name, and author’s affiliation is placed on the title page; the first page has the same information, but also includes the author’s note. The running head is the title, all caps and fifteen characters or less, in the page header. A second and third level of page headers may also be needed for categories of pages such as front matter, an abstract, or reference sections.

The key components of an APA style research or professional article are as listed. Please feel free to note that most of these elements are keyed under Level 1 formatting.

3. Critical Reading and Analysis Techniques

Critical reading and analysis requires a reader to bring to bear two major cognitive tasks. The reader must understand the content and context of the article and assess its quality and implications. Also, a given article may be evaluated differently for one particular use (e.g., as evidence for a class discussion or exam question) as compared to another (e.g., as part of a literature review or meta-analysis). Different questions may be asked depending on the current research goals of the reader.

To be successful as a consumer of the scientific literature, the reader must develop important critical-thinking skills. The kinds of questions that one might ask of an APA-style article are not all that different from the questions one might ask of anything else one reads. The heart of this chapter, therefore, consists of a few different sets of questions to keep in mind while reading an article. These questions are not sequential; they are organized by subject matter. Depending on your purpose, and whether you have already read or are currently reading a particular article, different sets of questions may be more important or relevant to you at a given time. Planning, ongoing analysis, and final evaluation are all important parts of the process of reading and understanding an empirical article.

4. Common Errors and Pitfalls to Avoid

One simple piece of advice can be used as a touchstone in all the cases we explored: you should avoid being too inside your own work. All too often, students write in such a way as if they were still working on their subject, as if they were close to the events and actions that took place in the experiment or in the literature review. This is particularly true for the story you have to tell. Nobody knows the story as well as you do, and nobody knows how difficult it was to get such poor results as the ones you have. But readers need to be reminded of why the story is both important and difficult, especially when this is not self-evident, and they need to be shown how the different pieces you present add to our understanding. These steps are essential for your reader to be convinced by the story you wish to tell.

To ensure both the clarity and effectiveness of your writing, you need to remember that the rules are not there to trip you up or make life difficult for you. The rules are there to guide your readers through your argument, enabling them to navigate their way to the conclusion you would like them to reach. If your writing does not help your readers find their way, you can be sure they will rapidly become bored and gradually make the mental decision to stop reading as attentively as they should. The result for you is that instead of a fascinated and attentive audience, you will have a disbelieving and critical group of readers who are all too ready to pounce on your smallest mistake, instead of being charmed and convinced by your arguments. What you have in the end is a lose-lose situation, both for your reader, who receives poor quality arguments requiring more effort to assimilate than they should, and for yourself, who is rapidly losing your readers’ respect.

5. Conclusion and Future Directions

In future research, if anyone would like to further evaluate the external and internal validity of the critiquing guidelines and exercises, the researcher may test the approach in teaching activities and refine the guidelines. The updated approach can then be offered directly to the students for critique application. I will be using the guidelines illustrated thoroughly in the undergraduate courses that I teach as part of the management curriculum. Additionally, critiques can be performed in specific fields of management studies as part of comprehensive examination in Ph.D. programs or included as a class activity.

I hope the critiquing process will stimulate readers to use and apply the theoretical and empirical knowledge in the reviewed articles to their own generic and individual practices. It is always exciting to have the capability to reflect and understand different phenomena in our field of organization science. Using the critiquing guidelines illustrated in this paper, readers can perform exercises included in the appendix. These exercises can facilitate a critical review of the selected journal articles from management and organization science literature.