How Do I Identify Research Articles?
How do I Identify Research Articles?
- Confirm that it is a scholarly article. It should be published in a scholarly journal and not a newspaper or popular magazine. The authors should be experts in the field and not journalists. The article must have a reference list. If the article does not have these elements it is not scholarly, and it cannot be a research article.
- It must be original research conducted by the authors of the research article. They ran surveys, did the experiments, collected data, made observations, conducted interviews or otherwise gathered material on their own or with a team of researchers.
- The abstract often has clues. Look for a sentence that says something like “this study examines…” or “we did research to find…” Such statements indicate that the author probably conducted original research.
- A research article is different than a "literature review" article, which is a critical evaluation of material that has been previously published.
Types of Research Articles
There are several types of research articles. A research article is a primary source...that is, it reports the methods and results of an original study performed by the authors. When scientists and other scholars want to make the results of their work public, they usually begin by publishing them in a scholarly journal with a title like Research in Social Work, or Journal of Marriage and the Family.
These are the most commonly found of research articles found in Social Science literature.
Quantitative Research - involves the use of numerical calculations or summarize, describe and explore relationships among traits; reliance on control of variables, statistics, measurement, and experiments.
Qualitative Research - emphasis is on conducting studies in natural settings using mostly verbal descriptions, resulting in stories and case studies rather than statistical reports.
Mixed Methods - employs both quantitative an qualitative designs.
(Adapted from McMillan & Wergin. 2010. Understanding and Evaluating Educational Research).
Below are some good sites that explain in depth the different types of studies:
Elements of a Research Article
Elements of a Research Article
Research articles are a specific type of scholarly, peer-reviewed article. They typically follow a particular format and include specific elements that show how the research was designed, how the data was gathered, how it was analyzed, and what the conclusions are. Sometimes these sections may be labeled a bit differently, but these basic elements are consistent:
Abstract: A brief, comprehensive summary of the article, written by the author(s) of the article.This abstract must be part of the article, not a summary in the database. Abstracts can appear in secondary source articles as well as primary source.
Introduction: This introduces the problem, tells you why it’s important, and outlines the background, purpose, and hypotheses the authors are trying to test. The introduction comes first, just after the abstract, and is usually not labeled.
Methods: Tells the reader describes in details how the research was conducted, and may be subdivided into subsections describing Materials, Apparatus, Subjects, Design, and Procedures.
Results: Summarizes the data and describes how it was analyzed. It should be sufficiently detailed to justify the conclusions. Sometimes called "Findings."
Discussion: The authors explain how the data fits their original hypothesis, state their conclusions, and look at the theoretical and practical implications of their research. Sometimes called "Analysis."
References: Lists the complete bibliography of sources cited in the research article.
Research Articles
How to Read an Empirical Research Article
Rather long (12 minutes) but if you are at a loss, this is excellent.
Click the image to view the video.
