apa article review example

apa article review example

Analyzing the Effectiveness of APA Article Reviews

1. Introduction

In the words of Love and Webb (1992), “the review can be a vehicle for developing communication among colleagues and a mechanism for enhancing faculty development of an intellectual and professional sort of service, on an international basis.” Reviewing provides a useful vehicle for serving the field and feeling part of the scientific community. However, all service activities deplete the time and energy of the server, and the opportunity costs of review are high if the reviewed articles are never published and do not affect the field. The progression of article review to actual article improvement and the effects of improved articles on the field are presumed to be positive, nevertheless the chain of events and ultimate effects have not been well specified. As a sharp contrast article reviews funded by private sector or government contracts where the deliverables are clearly specified and there are incentives to do a good job; reviews for journal article are usually provided on a voluntary basis with uncertain consequences. A thorough understanding of the reviewing process at APA journals and its effects will provide information to reviewers, and APA administration that will help to improve the quality and effectiveness of article reviews.

For many researchers, an academic appointment includes a heavy expectation of regular article reviews, yet the effectiveness of reviewing as an academic enterprise receives little attention. Although there are a number of articles offering advice on how to review effectively (e.g., Hunsley, Pinsent, Lefebvre, and James, 1996; Love and Webb, 1992; Smith, 1993; Webb, Love, Holt, and Walker, 1985), there have been no empirical investigations of the effects of reviewing. It is assumed that reviews are somehow beneficial to the field and that the APA journals are of higher quality than other journals because they are more selective and have a faster rate of improvement in their Impact Factors. However, the quality of reviews and how reviewing translates into journal improvements or citations is unclear.

What do researchers actually do when they review an article for a peer-reviewed journal? What are the elements of a high-quality review? Using a unique data set consisting of the text of almost 1000 reviews from more than 200 reviewers, we investigate the characteristics of a high-quality review and the effects of reviewing on subsequent citations. We focus on the American Psychological Association (APA) journals.

2. Importance of APA Article Reviews

In terms of the value that APA article reviews have to the student and results it gives, it is essential as a tool for learning. It makes one think about the meaning of an article and its validity in a systematic way compared with just reading an article. Studies have recommended that if the reason for doing a task is known and is intriguing, there will be more motivation to do the task. So it is suggested that students given an interest in research some of the time will be more inclined to search through evidence to answer their own questions. APA article reviews have also been shown to stimulate metacognitive thought processes. This is an important aspect of learning as through thinking about thinking one will be able to improve their thought process and learn to avoid certain problem spots. This will result in ways to approach the same activity but with a more desirable result.

APA article reviews involve a systematic method of appraising the quality of an article. It is not just limited to students; teachers often assign students to review articles as a way of testing their analytical, comprehension, and research skills. At the same time, it makes possible the avoidance of repetition of research and teaching the wrong content. Often, it is a test of knowledge for the reviewing student as the knowledge of how to rate articles and what makes a good article is not something that a person has inside them but is learned through experience and mistakes. Hence, the knowledge acquired on how to rate articles is important for teachers and people in research-related jobs. This same experience is important for the student as it may one day lead to a job in research where one will have to rate articles and draw conclusions. APA article reviews also serve as a great tool for improving communication between students and teachers. This has been identified as an important way of teaching students to learn the skills of evidence-based practice by sorting through evidence and presenting conclusions to assess the validity of their beliefs. The ability to rate articles is not always intuitive, and students can often have discrepancies with their teacher about why a certain article is good or bad. So the ability to communicate and get feedback from a teacher is essential.

APA (American Psychological Association) style is a standardized way of presenting a professional work such as academic journal articles and books. APA article reviews are essential in the development of academic research, knowledge, and progress. This study aims to examine the effectiveness of APA article reviews in cultivating students’ academic skills and knowledge, providing an important insight into the importance of APA article reviews and its value in education.

3. Key Elements of an Effective APA Article Review

This section provides guidelines for constructing an effective APA article review. It focuses on the key elements of a review that will lead to thorough understanding and an insightful interpretation of an article. Preparing to write a review begins much before the actual writing. It requires an in-depth understanding of the article, a sufficient amount of analysis, and a good organization in order to evaluate the overall credibility and usefulness of the article. Therefore, the first element to a good review is to read in preparation for the review—understanding an article on the first reading is difficult, so it is important to read it more than once. This can be facilitated by making notes and/or highlighting/underlining information in the margins. Another technique is to write a brief summary of the article. This will ensure that the review will be an organized and intellectual piece of work. A well-organized article review will provide the reader with insight, an easy and thorough understanding, and indirectly the writer has evaluated the credibility and usefulness of the article.

4. Critiquing an Example APA Article Review

Nowadays, various authors are writing articles, quite different in structure and methods, so that they cannot judge who is giving them the exact and precise note on how to write the article so that it’s easier for them to determine it. In every article, more than 40% of their articles are rejected just because they had made mistakes in the article, and so they don’t want these kinds of errors to happen again when they rewrite the article. To solve such kind of problems, there is a method called writing an article review. This has now become the easiest and the fastest method of checking their articles and the notes. Writing an article review may be simple, but many people do not know how to write, and this can be a serious problem because there are various types of article reviews. This is just like an example of an article and its review. By writing this type of example article review, the authors will be able to understand what an article review is and how to write it. From the introduction that had been written above, it can be seen that the main point of the article is directly pointed to the readers. This method is good for an article to be understood by the readers. From the first paragraph of the article, the author is asking himself a question. This is also a good method so that the readers will have curiosity to read through the article. This article has many subtitles that had been underlined and bold. By having these types of subtitles, this will also make the readers easier to understand this article. This is because the author is giving an explanation on what the subtitle is all about. The most important thing is the conclusion. A good article must have a conclusion so that the main point of the article can be grasped by the readers, and this conclusion is just exactly what the article is all about. So it can be said that this article is good for understanding.

5. Conclusion

The study is of significant value to the field. Health research is the means to understanding variations between health care and health population outcomes. High quality research allows us to inform health policy and improve practice. We are constantly learning and improving our methods. One thing we feel the community should move towards is improving the accuracy and quality of the line of evidence assessments, in order to ensure the most appropriate method is carried out and bias is minimized. This methodology will be useful for the process. A similar study did not conclude their review on critical appraisal of a Cochrane back review with a clear direction or level of confidence of the evidence. Nor did they extract data for analysis of the trials supporting their results. Another recent study did not complete many steps we have described, including summarizing findings for similar studies and assessing the strength of the evidence. This shows work is still required in this area. Our findings and author-analysis may also be useful to later carry out a study assessing if author conclusions accurately reflect review results, and how this can be improved. Cause for improvement is a positive outcome of our study. Analyses of APA reviews provide quantitative evidence to support our theories. The strength of all our results is reinforced by the high kappa values. Issues such as only moderate agreement for direction upholding specificity in injury prevention recommendations is an important finding in itself. The agreement was low between authors for trial typing, showing that even some of the most basic methods used within a trial may have different interpretations. All results in the author-analysis requiring agreement have given recommendations for improvement. The level of agreement for the reasons behind decisions was high, indicating that in most cases, explanations provided in the review can accurately reflect the method.