apa journal article review example

apa journal article review example

The Impact of APA Journal Article Reviews

1. Introduction

An analysis of the language used in the APA Journal Article Reviews is invaluable in synthesizing the vast array of research into a systematic understanding of issues. It is a truly unique database to which considerable thought, effort, and creativity was applied in order to develop a tool that will prove to be an important resource for the application of psychological science. This database is considered to be a living document in that new items will be added frequently and improvements will be made to search and retrieve capabilities. Because of its dynamic nature, and based on feedback from database users, the included information will be continuously reevaluated and changes to the database will be considered. As the internet makes information available in more formats and from global resources, the best way to affect what is represented in psychological literature is to examine the literature itself. At times this may involve persevering to clean the data so that it accurately reflects the literature. This too is an iterative process, but one which is consistently linked back to the original source. The database is an attempt to help those who are trying to do the science of psychology by archiving and representing where the evidence comes from and the methods through which it was derived. And while the database has been designed with the primary purpose of aiding psychological scientists, it can prove useful to others who are trying to access information about empirical studies reported in the literature. An analysis of the language can make the intentions clear on some of these items. Through all analyses, the primary goal is to improve how psychological science is conducted and reported.

2. Importance of APA Journal Article Reviews

To review is to make an assessment, and to make a methodical survey is to make an assessment of an article. As far as most of the article reviews are often compared to a standard essay, a review paper is kind of essay which does not fall within the boundaries of an essay. A review is an essay or article which gives a critical evaluation of something. A review is an article which makes a statement and then critically assesses an article or other publication. A review article differs from a research article in that the review article examines the evidence presented in a balanced way, giving equal weight to both the supporting and opposing views, while a research article’s recommendations are the presentation of a new piece of research, which in turn will recommend a certain stance. Finally, review papers are designed to generate new ideas from the information compiled. This is in contrast to research papers, which are often aimed at recommending a new course for something or recommending that the reader becomes involved in a new course of action. The new ideas will be created through the information written. In the case of an article reviewing a single paper, the new ideas will be the information presented in the recommendations mentioned earlier.

3. Key Elements of an Effective Review

Invaluable advice is offered about the review process. Reviews should be concise and, at the same time, include all of the essential elements of the article being reviewed. “Highly detailed abstracts” or outlines of the article should be avoided. Instead, the review should contain all of the main points, explanations, and arguments. It should be “a substitution for the article” – not an imitation of it. A good method is to include the information from the article into the review in a manner that is most logical and easy to understand. This is generally done by putting each component of the article into a few sentences; one method is to create an outline for the article, then develop the outline into a review. One or two examples are often all that is necessary to illustrate aspects of the article. Too many examples or too much time spent discussing the article can make the review less concise or detailed than it should be. This may result in an unsuccessful review.

4. Critique and Analysis of a Sample Article

Finally, an effective APA style has been presented when the authors guide their reader through the next section of the paper. This is to be achieved with a continuation of the abstract. This can help a reader decide whether the article is worth reading in its entirety. In this particular case, the section of the article following the abstract details the method in which the research on abuse and aggression was obtained. There is no established maximum length of an abstract continuation in the APA manual. However, for brevity, the authors may detail a range of research to just give a feel for the rest of the article. An example is found in a previous article from the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology to this current one where the research was similar. This would better help the reader decide whether this article is worth reading for a comparison on the two different studies.

The article abstract is generally consistent with the guide from the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. The length is defined as “no more than 120 words”. This abstract is 134 words long. Because it only slightly overshoots the maximum length, it can be considered quite succinct. The abstract is also supposed to summarize the research and define the thesis and conclusion. This is done effectively when certain aspects of aggression are discussed rather than the team’s entire research. An example is the line “in which aggressive reactions occur.

Some categories, such as the review of the entire article, do not specifically pertain to only the final in-text citation. When the article is viewed, it is evident that it was cited effectively utilizing the APA guidelines. Two of the authors of the article are affiliated with the University of California at Davis. The third author is a member of the faculty in the Department of Psychology at Sonoma State University. Although these three individuals are from two different colleges, their college affiliations are not presented in the in-text citation. It is assumed that in this instance it was not presented for conciseness.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the above findings carry good and bad news for research. Although undergraduate students are able to use guides to quickly form judgments about articles and are influenced by the guide in their immediate assessments of these judgments, the potential effectiveness of a guide may hinge on its length and the degree of inference it triggers. This result in turn sets a high bar in terms of creating a guide that quickly communicates the article’s merits and leads to improved evaluations of the article itself. Although the research here fell short of providing a formula for how to create such a guide, the door is open to further research that addresses this issue and explores other strategies for improving article evaluations. Given the substantial pedagogical value of having students read and critically evaluate research articles, the ultimate ability to enhance these evaluations through guide manipulation offers promise for future research in this area.

In Experiment 1, recall that the article was chosen based on the reputation of the author and the relevance of the topic for a class on human behavior. Participants used one of four versions of a guide to rate the article, and in Experiment 2, a different sample of students rated the helpfulness and clarity of the short versus long guides. As anticipated, students in the short-guide condition of Experiment 2 recalled fewer cues and concepts from the guide than did students in the long-guide condition, with no exchange in ratings of article quality. However, contrary to predictions, the absence of a large guide-length effect on the recall of substantive content did not interact with how much the guide was liked and regarded as helpful. Furthermore, although students who used short guides rated the guide as significantly less helpful and clear than did students who used long guides, the difference between short and long guides on these ratings was less than the researchers had hoped. These results point to the initial and somewhat disheartening conclusion that the creation of a brief, compelling guide may entail more trade-offs with guide readers than expected. Although the guide length must be manipulated in future reviews of journal articles (and perhaps in other research contexts) to further understand the cost of a short guide, the researchers had hoped that more cues signaling the importance and helpfulness of the article would be quickly and durably conveyed with a short guide and that this impact would be reflected in the guide ratings.