apa article review example pdf

apa article review example pdf

The Importance of APA Article Review

1. Introduction

There are two reasons why this model is less than ideal for the student population. First, it is not written with students as an audience in mind, so its message is muddled and tough to decipher. Because of this, it will be harder for the students to understand the article, and thus there is a lower probability that they will take a lesson in how to write an article. The second reason is that the model is overly complex. It is important that students aspiring to any social science or psychology-related career internalize the habit of consuming and producing research. But in today’s college institutions, research methods and content analysis are often taught in a dry and uninspiring manner, so most students lack enthusiasm about learning it. This makes the task of getting them to consume complex research a daunting one. While it is of critical importance that students develop an understanding of complex research, overburdening them too early can result in discouragement and abandonment of the task. This would be a dire outcome, as research literacy has never been more important, and understanding complex research has clear implications in critical thinking skills and depth of understanding in one’s field of study.

The paper has two intended purposes. One essential purpose of this paper is to present a resource for students to refine their researching and writing skills. Development in the argument aspect of critical thinking skills can be made by writing a simple version of an article review. Students, by writing the less familiar version, will also find it easier to understand the correlation between an argument and providing supportive evidence. The second purpose of this paper is to elaborate on understanding a method of article review by using a model for the students. The Basic Five Paragraph Essay can be an easy model to copy in constructing parallel arguments in an article review. This very simple and easy method will lead to a clear thesis and well-built argumentation. This modeling is one of the best ways to teach the correct use of the APA and article review itself, since educators can also clarify the errors that the students made in constructing parallel arguments.

2. Overview of APA Article Review

Plan a Comparative Analysis: – Question and critique the knowledge/data to assess its fairness and reliability in the article. – Look for evidence for and against, drawing evidence-based conclusions. This is key to organizing the next step.

Identify the Ideology: – Essential to finding the problems in the article. – Try to note what the article is trying to imply at certain places. This will aid you in easily locating parts of the article when it comes to writing.

How to: – Get a good idea of the article’s area of research and main topic point. – Read more on the area of research to get a good understanding. – Can be hard if the topic area is one of little knowledge to the reviewer. – Critiquing is easier if one is more knowledgeable about the topic area.

There are four different types of articles that you are required to review in a scholarly assignment: an empirical article, an editorial, a review article, or an abstract. With each type of article, whether you are critiquing the reliability, validity, objectivity, or significance, you will more than likely be provided with a framework on how to construct your critique. For example, a research article is more likely to ask for specific points within a given guideline, whereas you may have to deduce the evaluation yourself for an article not as clear-cut in providing the information. This could be quite difficult if the article is on a topic that you have little prior knowledge on; however, you should always have a good knowledge of the research and main points of the article that you have read. A good feel for the area of research is crucial to providing an informed review. With knowledge orientation and being able to identify the ideology in the article, you can find the problems in the article. Always try to jot down notes. A good tip is to note next to sentences/paragraphs you are evaluating what that particular part of the article is trying to imply. This will always help you easily locate parts of the article when it comes to writing your review. Plan effectively for a comparative analysis of the article, as the rationale behind the review is considered to be to question and critique the knowledge/data in the article to assist others in assessing the value and scope of the article. The final step is to organize your review, weighing evidence for and against, drawing evidence-based conclusions, and noting the implications of what you have found in your notes from the initial article critique.

Basic concepts In this section, we will provide a short overview of the types of articles you can review, the different ways you can review an article, and the best method to go about writing a constructive critical review.

3. Key Elements of a Well-Written Review

However, most crucial is the provision of a roadmap for the reader at the start of the review, or in its abstract. This will let the reader know exactly what to expect of the review, and will therefore ensure that they are less likely to find themselves misdirected in the search for information. Next comes the actual “reviewing” part of producing a review, where judgment is used to recommend or debase an item of interest. This should be done in a balanced manner, providing merit to positive and negative aspects that one comes across. This is best executed by splitting the review into separate sections in which similar aspects of whatever is being reviewed are compared and contrasted to each other. Finally, one must resist the temptation to make a review that is nothing more than a long-winded tale of their own experiences. Though inevitably those experiences will color the judgment of its writer, a good review should be an attempt to inform the reader whether their own future experiences would be worthwhile. Personal anecdotes have no place in this unless they are used as evidence to back up a point, and the writing of a review should always be objective. Combining all of these factors will result in a useful and readable review and should provide an answer to the question of the reviewer’s purpose.

Writing is a lot like alchemy. The best work is understated and unshowy; it toils hard but makes the process invisible to the reader, creating a sequence of logical steps whose efficacy in conveying the goal appears a matter of coincidence. Solid reviewing is much the same. An excellent review will flow a reader through the outcome of considered, informed judgment without the reader once having to stop and contemplate what’s going on. This occurs as a combination of strong writing and a well-structured argument. For a review, the two are inextricably connected, since the key to interesting your reader is to make an argument which leads somewhere, so the ability to write a clear, well-structured paper is of the utmost importance. The key to structure lies in creating a clear set of signposts throughout the review, where the writer guides the reader through their argument with the deftness of a drinker guiding a mouse through a maze with a piece of cheese. This is done both within paragraphs and on a larger scale. At a paragraph level, topic sentences should be used at the beginning of each paragraph to outline the point to be used in that particular section of the review. This will allow a reader to skim through a paper and obtain a basic understanding with ease.

4. Tips for Writing an Effective Review

You may think that this is not the right way to go about it, but it is the most useful way to write a constructive evaluation. By directly referring to something the author has written, you avoid any possibility of misinterpretation, and you can then use the author’s own conclusions to assess the article. A critical evaluation is not simply saying whether the author agrees with the article; it is an in-depth evaluation of the article’s worth in a way that is beneficial to the author. A good evaluation will agree with the article half the time, and the other half will be split between suggestions of better ways to do things and outright disagreement but convincing reasoning from the evaluator. At this point, it will be very useful to compare your evaluation with that of other articles on the same topic. And the critical evaluation is usually concluded with your personal opinion.

An important point to note is that this is the evaluator’s (your) opinion on the article. It is not necessarily the same as the author’s or what you will put in your summary. A critical evaluation is written in the form of an argument, using the following format: “This article is a good piece of work on the article because the author …. (conclusion)” or “This article is not a very good piece of work on the article because the author …. (conclusion)”.

When you have a better understanding of the article, you can then begin to evaluate it. While you read, you should try to answer the following questions: What is the article’s conception of the topic? What information is it trying to convey? What problems is the author addressing? What are the conclusions and recommendations? It might be useful to make notes on the article to better understand it as you read it. Then, based on these notes, you can write a more detailed evaluation in the form of a critical analysis.

The first step is an obvious one: you need to define the topic of the work. What specifically is it addressing? What is the author trying to answer? What are they saying? It might be useful to restate the article’s topic in a single sentence to better understand it. Then you’ll need to ask yourself and find out what the author’s position on the topic is. This leads to the next step.

Writing the critical review requires you to read the selected article in detail and other related articles so you can present an objective and intelligent evaluation. Your review should provide a description, summary, and critical evaluation of the article. The steps in writing this type of assignment are to define the topic, increase your knowledge on the topic, read and write the review.

5. Conclusion

These same questions are also asked by a person who is trying to decide whether or not to use the information from the article. They want to take as little time as possible to understand the research, while at the same time they want to understand the information as best as they can. This is usually done by reading the title and the conclusion more thoroughly and then just grasping the main points in the discussion and results section. The reader also wants to determine whether the research is valid, and what the implications of the results are. This information can usually be found by looking at an article that appraises the article, or reading an article review. So essentially, an article review is a logical and time-effective way for people to determine whether they should change their practice based on new research.

The aim of producing an APA article review is to provide a concise summary and evaluation of the research conducted by the writer and to advise the reader to determine whether or not they should purchase the content. Article reviews are often written by information specialists who work in the same field as the author. This is a way for information specialists to combine and evaluate the latest research in the field, and has been likened to a mini-meta analysis (Lefebvre et al., 2009). When information specialists are looking at an article, they usually ask the following questions: What is the work about? What were the results? Is the work valid? What are the implications of the work? Can I use this work?