Paper details Part A Read again the 15 guidelines. Instead of giving a familiarity rating for each guideline, just choose 2 or 3 guidelines that were LEAST familiar to you. Which ones were they? What did you find most surprising in Chapter 1 when reading about these unfamiliar guidelines? Part B Read the attached article from a respected academic journal. Briefly answer each one of the 14 questions listed in Part B when applied to this article. Make sure to write the question number before each of your answers. part b Directions: Read an empirical research article published in an academic, peer-reviewed journal, and respond to the following questions. The article may be one that you select or one that is assigned by your instructor. If you are using this book without any prior training in research methods, do the best you can in answering the questions at this point. As you work through this book, your evaluations will become increasingly sophisticated. How narrowly is the research problem defined? In your opinion, is it too narrow? Is it too broad? Explain.
Was the research setting artificial (e.g., a laboratory setting)? If yes, do you think that the gain in the control of extraneous variables offsets the potential loss of information that would be obtained in a study in a more real-life setting? Explain. Are there any obvious flaws or weaknesses in the researcher’s methods of measure -ment or observation? Explain. (Note: This aspect of research is usually described under the subheading Measures.) Are there any obvious sampling flaws? Explain. Was the analysis statistical or non-statistical? Was the description of the results easy to understand? Explain. Are definitions of the key terms provided? Is the measurement strategy for the associated variables aligned with the provided definitions? Explain. Were the descriptions of procedures and methods sufficiently detailed? Were any important details missing? Explain. Does the report lack information on matters that are potentially important for evaluating it? Do the researchers include a discussion of the limitations of their study? Does the researcher imply that his or her research proves something?
Do you believe that it proves something? Explain. Does the researcher describe related theories? Can you assess the quality of the journal the article is published in? Can you find information online about the journal’s ranking or impact factor? Overall, was the research obviously very weak? If yes, briefly describe its weak -nesses and speculate on why it was published despite them. Do you think that as a result of reading this chapter and evaluating a research report you are becoming more expert at evaluating research reports? Explain.
